Warhammer 40k Codex
by Ty2425
Summary: All codexs
1. Chapter 1

Ok i have decide to make a CODEX for anyone that what to make a Warhammer 40k FIC or Crossover All of this Info is Canon this is t help with anyone that is lacking certain things of warhammer 40k.

First chapter here is going to be about the First race to rise

The Star Gods

The **C'tan **or **Star Gods** (in the Eldar Lexicon they are called the_Yngir_) are said to be the oldest intelligent beings in existence in theMilky Way Galaxy. It is said that they were created at the very beginning of the universe, spawned from swirling gases and enormous amounts of energy, and as such are etheric creatures by nature. In their natural form they are vast beings and spread themselves over the surface of a star, absorbing its solar energy to feed themselves. After a time, they learned to use diaphanous wings to travel to other stars to continue their consumption when their host star died. The matter around them was so insignificant that it did not register on their voracious appetite. They are able to interact with the physical world thanks to the technology of the Necrontyr which transferred their consciousnesses into robotic bodies made of the living metal called Necrodermis. The C'tan used the hatred of the Necrontyr towards the ancient species called the Old Ones to help them gather the more appetizing energy of living beings that they came to crave.

The C'tan hate the Warp and its psychic energies (even as they crave the living energies of organic beings) and had the Necrons construct a series of pylons on the world of Cadia and other planets across several sectors in the Segmentum Obscurus which, when completed, were intended to close off the Warp from the material universe entirely, utterly destroying any living creatures with a soul, leaving all other life in the galaxy as nourishment for the C'tan.

It was the C'tan who designed the process of bio-transference for the Necrontyr, transferring their proteges' consciousnesses into undying mechanical bodies composed of Necrodermis. However, the biotransference process also transformed the Necrontyr into theNecrons, soulless beings who have difficulty taking pleasure in anything and who can never truly enjoy their immortality. After the end of the War in Heaven against their ancient foes the Old Ones, the Necrons, led by the Silent King Szarekh, successfully rebelled against their C'tan Star Gods. Those C'tan who survived the revolt were broken into fragments known as C'tan Shards that were more easily contained and imprisoned within arcane Necron devices known as Tesseract Labyrinths. At present, since the Necrons' Great Awakening began in the mid-41st Millennium, these C'tan Shards are deployed when needed as the Necron Dynasties' greatest weapons on the battlefield. However, there always exists the possibility that the imprisoned C'tan will escape their captors. Then they will wreak a terrible vengeance upon their captors and the innocent alike...

HistoryThe Star Gods

The birth of the entities known as the Star Gods occurred at the same time as the moment of Creation itself, as they formed from the vast, insensate energies first unleashed by that churning mass of cataclysmic force. In that anarchic interweaving of matter and energy, the sea of stars began to swirl into existence and for an eon the universe was nothing more than hot hydrogen gas and light elemental dust ruled over by the gravitic force of billions of newborn suns. Long before the first planets had formed and cooled, the very first truly self-aware beings emerged, their thoughts encased within the lines of force produced by the plasma and electromagnetic flares of the stars themselves. In later times, these entities would become known as the C'tan, but early in their existence they were nothing like the malevolent beings they would eventually become. They were little more than monstrous energy parasites that suckled upon the solar energies of the stars that had brought them into existence, shortening the lives of otherwise main-sequence stars by millions of standard years. In time, these star vampires learned to move on the diaphanous wings of the universe's electromagnetic flux, leaving their birthplaces to drift through the cosmic ether to new stellar feeding grounds and begin their cycle of stellar destruction once more. Beings of pure energy, they paid no mind to the hunks of solid matter they passed in the vacuum of space, the blazing geothermal fires and weak geomagnetic fields of these nascent planets insufficient to be worth feeding even their ravenous hunger.

The Necrontyr and the Wars of Secession

The humanoid species that would become the Necrons began their existence under a fearsome, scourging star in the far reaches of the galaxy known as the Halo Stars region, billions of standard years before Mankind evolved onTerra. Assailed at every moment by ionising solar winds and intense radiation storms, the flesh and blood Necrontyr became a morbid people whose precarious life spans were riven by constant loss. What little information theImperium of Man has recovered on the Necrontyr tells that their lives were short and uncertain, their bodies blighted and consumed at an early age by the terrible cancers and other illnesses linked to the high levels of ionising radiation given off by their sun. Necrontyr cities were built in anticipation of their inhabitants' early demise, as the living were only brief residents living in the shadow of the vast sepulchres and tombs of their ancestors. Likewise, their ruling dynasties were founded on the anticipation of demise, and the living were thought of as no more than temporary residents hurrying through the more permanent and lasting structures raised to honour the dead. On the Necrontyr homeworld, the greatest monuments were always built for the dead, never the living. Driven by necessity, the Necrontyr escaped their crucible-prison and struck out for the stars, hopeful of carving an empire in which they could realise their species' potential free from the lethal energies of their birth star.

Unable to find peace on their own world, the Necrontyr blindly groped outward into the universe to explore other stars. Using stasis crypts and slow-moving antimatter-powered torch-ships that were clad in the living metal known as necrodermis to resist the millennia-long journeys through the void, the Necrontyr began to colonise distant worlds. Little by little, the Necrontyr dynasties spread ever further, until much of the ancient galaxy answered to their rule. From the earliest days, the rulers of individual Necrontyr dynasties were themselves governed by the Triarch, a council composed of three Phaerons. The head of the Triarch was known as the Silent King, for he addressed his subjects only through the other two Phaerons who ruled alongside him. Nominally a hereditary position, the uncertain life spans of the Necrontyr ensured that the title of Silent King nonetheless passed from one royal dynasty to another many times. The final days of the Necrontyr Empire occurred in the reign of Szarekh, the last of the Silent Kings.

Sometime during their slow expansion, the Necrontyr encountered an ancient species far older than any other in existence in the known galaxy. Collectively, these beings were known as the Old Ones, and they were absolute masters of forms of energy the Necrontyr could not even conceive of, yet alone wield. The Old Ones had long ago conquered the secrets of immortality, yet they refused to share the gift of eternal life with the Necrontyr, who yet bore the curse of the bitter star they had been born under. The colonisation of much of the galaxy by the reptilian mystics had been immeasurably swifter and more expansive than that of the Necrontyr because of their Warp Gatesand mastery of the Immaterium. That, and the Old Ones' incredibly long, if not downright immortal lifespans, kindled a burning, jealous rage in the Necrontyr, which ate at their culture spiritually as much as their physical cancers consumed their bodies. The Necrontyr were astonished to learn that another intelligent species enjoyed such long lives while their own were cut so brutally short.

But as time wore on, further strife came to the Necrontyr. Each dynasty of the Necrontyr sought to claim its own destiny and soon the great houses were engaged in all-out conflicts known as the Wars of Secession. Had circumstances remained as they were for but a generation more, it is possible that the Necrontyr would have wiped themselves out, as so many species had before them and shall do in the future. As their territory grew ever wider and more diverse, the unity that had made them strong was eroded, and bitter wars were waged as entire realms fought to win independence. Ultimately, the Triach - the ruling council of the Necrontyr Empire- realised that the only hope of unity lay in conflict with an external enemy, but there were few who could prove a credible threat. Only the Old Ones, the first of all the galaxy's known sentient species, were a prospective foe powerful enough to bind the feuding Necrontyr dynasties to a common cause. Such a war was simplicity itself to justify, for the Necrontyr had ever rankled at the Old Ones' refusal to share the secrets of eternal life. So did the Triarch declare war on the Old Ones. At the same time, they offered amnesty to any secessionist dynasties wjo willingly returned to the fold. Thus lured by the spoils of victory and the promise of immortality, the separatist Necrontyr realms abandoned their Wars of Secession and the War in Heaven began.

It was the last of the Silent Kings who headed the Triarch of the Necrontyr Empire, Szarekh, who formulated the plan that would change everything forever and have consequences that would echo through history for countless millions of years. In a typically bitter act of jealousy and resentment for the Necrontyr race, it was the Silent King who used the Old Ones' refusal to share the secret of immortality as a pretext for war, forcibly uniting the entire Necrontyr species beneath the rule of the Triarch against their common foe. War erupted across the stars, yet while the Silent King succeeded in uniting his hateful people, it was a war the Necrontyr could not win. Not on their own.

The War in Heaven

The terrible wars between the Old Ones and the Necrontyr that followed, known later in Eldar myth as the War in Heaven, would fill a library in their own right, but the Necrontyr could never win. Their superior technology was consistently outmanoeuvred by the Old Ones thanks to their mastery of the Webway portals and Warp Gates. The Necrontyr were pushed back until they were little more than an irritation to the Old Ones' dominance of the galaxy, a quiescent threat clinging to their irradiated world among the Halo Stars, exiled and forgotten. The Necrontyr's fury was cooled by their long millennia of imprisonment on their homeworld, slowly transforming into an utter hatred towards all other forms of intelligent life and an implacable determination to avenge themselves upon their seemingly invincible enemies.

But in the face of defeat, the always fragile unity of the Necrontyr began to fracture once more. No longer did the prospect of a common enemy have any hold over the disparate dynasties. Scores of generations had now lived and died in the service of an unwinnable war, and many Necrontyr dynasties would have gladly sued for peace with the Old Ones if the ruling Triarch had permitted it.

Thus began the second iteration of the Wars of Secession, more widespread and ruinous than any that had come before. So fractured has the Necrontyr dynasties become by then that, had the Old Ones been so inclined, they could have wiped out their foes with ease. Faced with the total collapse of their rule, the Triarch searched desperately for a means of restoring order. In this, their prayers were answered,though the price for their species would be incalculably high.

It was during the reign of the Silent King Szarekh that the godlike energy beings known as the C'tan first blighted the Necrontyr. It is impossible to say for certain how the Necrontyr first made contact with the C'tan though many misleading, contradictory and one-sided accounts of these events exist. The dusty archives of Solemnace claim it was but an accident, a chance discovery made by a stellar prove during the investigation of a dying star. The _Book of Mournful Night_, held under close guard in the Black Library's innermost sanctum, tells rather that the raw hatred that the Necrontyr held as a race for the Old Ones sang out across space, acting as a beacon that the C'tan could not ignore.

Another account claims that from the earliest days of their civilisation, Necrontyr scientists had been deeply engaged in stellar studies to try to understand and protect themselves from their own sun's baleful energies. After long, bitter centuries of searching for some power to unleash upon the Old Ones, the Necrontyr researchers used stellar probes to discover unusual electrodynamic anomalies in the oldest, dying stars of the galaxy. In the complex skeins of the energetic plasma of these suns, the Necrontyr found a sentience that was more ancient than that of any of the corporeal species in Creation, including the Old Ones, entities of pure energy that had spawned during the birth of the stars eons before. These entities had little conception of what the rest of the universe entailed when the Necrontyr first found them, feeding upon the solar flares and magnetic storms of these bloated red giants. Here was the weapon the Necrontyr had long sought to bring about the downfall of the Old Ones, beings they believed were the progeny of the death-god they worshipped. Howsoever first contact occurred, the shadow of the C'tan fell over the oldest Necrontyr dynasties first.

The power of these star-born creatures was incredible, the raw energy of the stars made animate, and the Necrontyr called them the C'tan or "Star Gods" in their own tongue. The C'tan were dispersed across areas larger than whole planets, their consciousnesses too vast for humanoids to comprehend. How the Necrontyr ever managed to communicate with them is unknown to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Understanding that such diffuse minds could never perceive the material universe without manifesting themselves in a material form, some Necrontyr actively sought the C'tan's favour and oversaw the forging of physical shells for the C'tan to occupy, cast from the living metal callednecrodermis that they had once used for their colony torch-ships. Fragmentary Eldar legends tell of translucent streamers of electromagnetic force shifting across space as the star vampires coiled into their new bodies in the physical realm across an incorporeal bridge of starlight. Thus clad, the C'tan took the shapes of the Necrontyr's half-forgotten gods, hiding their own desires beneath cloaks of obsequious subservience.

Incomprehensible forces were compressed into the living metal of the necrodermis bodies which the Necrontyr had forged as the full power of the C'tan at last found form. As the C'tan focused their consciousnesses and became ever more aware of their new mode of existence, they came to appreciate the pleasures available to beings of matter and the other realities of corporeal life. The deliciously focused trickles of electromagnetic energy given off by the physical bodies of the Necrontyr all about them awakened a new hunger in the C'tan very unlike the one they had once sated using the nourishing but essentially tasteless energies of the stars.

So it was that one of the C'tan came before the Silent King Szarekh, acting as forerunner to the coming of his brothers. Amongst its own kind, this C'tan was known as the Deceiver, for it was willfully treacherous. Yet the Silent King knew not the C'tan's true nature, and instead granted the creature an audience. The Deceiver spoke of a war, fought long before the birth of the Necrontyr, between the C'tan and the Old Ones. It was a war, he said, that the C'tan had lost. In the aftermath, and fearing the vengeance of the Old Ones, he and his brothers had hidden themselves away, hoping one day to find allies with whom they could finally bring the Old Ones to account. In return for this aid, the Deceiver assured, he and his brothers would deliver everything that the Necrontyr craved. Unity could be theirs once again, and the immortality that they had sought for so long would finally be within their grasp. No price would their be for these great gifts, the Deceiver insisted, for they were but boons to be bestowed upon valued allies.

Thus did the Deceiver speak, and who ca say how much of his tale was truth? It is doubtful whether even the Deceiver knew, for trickery had become so much a part of his existence that even he could no longer divine its root. Yet his words held sway over Szarekh who, like his ancestors before him, despaired of the divisions that were tearing his people apart. For long months he debated the matter with the other two Phaerons of the Triarch and the nobles of his Royal Court. Through it all, the only dissenting voice was that of Orikan, the court astrologer, who foretold that the alliance between the Necrontyr and the C'tan would bring about a renaissance of glory, but destroy forever the soul of the Necrontyr people. Yet desire and ambition swiftly overrode caution, and Orikan's prophecy was dismissed. A Necrontyr year after the Deceiver had presented his proposition, the Triarch agreed to the alliance, and so forever doomed their race.

For their part, the Necrontyr soon fell into awe of their discoveries and the C'tan moved to take control over their benefactors. The powers of the C'tan manifested in the physical world were indeed almost god-like and it was not long before the C'tan were being worshiped as the Star Gods the Necrontyr had named them. Perhaps they had been tainted by the material universe they had become a part of, or perhaps this had always been their nature even when they were bound to the suns they fed upon, but the C'tan proved to be as cruel and capricious as the stars from which they had been born. They soon revelled in the worship of the Necrontyr and feasted upon the life energies of countless mortal slaves.

Biotransference and the Rise of the Necrons"_When the Silent King saw what had been done, he knew at last the true nature of the C'tan, and of the doom they had wrought in his name._"—excerpt from the _Book of Mournful Night_

Armed with weapons of god-like power and starships that could cross the galaxy in the blink of an eye through the use of quantum phase technology, the Necrontyr stood ready to begin their war against the Old Ones anew. But the C'tan had another gift for their mortal subjects. They offered the Necrontyr a path to immortality and the physical stability their race had always craved. Their diseased flesh would be replaced with the living metal of necrodermis that made up their Star Gods' own physical forms. Their discarded organic husks would be consumed and their cold, metal forms would then be free to pursue their great vengeance against the Old Ones and the rest of a hateful universe, freed forever from the weaknesses of their hated flesh.

With the pact between Necrontyr and C'tan sealed, the Star Gods revealed the form that immortality would take for the Necrontyr, and the great biotransference process began. Colossal bio-furnaces built by Necrontyr artifice roared day and night, consuming weak-bodied flesh and replacing it with enduring machine forms of living metal, much like the C'tan themselves. As the cyclopean machines clamoured, the C'tan swarmed about the biotransference sites, drinking in the torrent of cast-off life energy and growing ever stronger.

Whether the Necrontyr actually realised the price they would actually pay for accepting this pact with the C'tan is not known. The immortality the C'tan promised would be delivered unto the Necrontyr by way of the arcane and terrible process of bio-transference. Vast bio-foundries were constructed, and into these the Silent King's peoples marched according to the terms of the pact he had made with the C'tan. What blasphemous procedures the Necrontyr were subjected to within the raging bio-furnaces cannot be known, but certainly, each was stripped of flesh and of soul, his body replaced by a shell of living metal animated by what remained of his guttering self. Above each furnace swooped and dove the ethereal true-forms of the C'tan as they glutted themselves on the spiritual detritus of an entire species. It was only when the Silent King himself emerged from the bio-transference process and looked upon what had become of his people that he saw the awful truth of the pact he had made. Though immortality and nigh godlike strength and vigour were his, it had come at the cost of his soul, the effluvial remains of which had already been sucked down the gullet of a circling C'tan.

As Szarekh watched the C'tan feast on the life essence of his people, he realised the terrible depth of his mistake. In many ways, he felt better that he had in decades, the countless aches and uncertainties of organic life now behind him. His new machine body was far mightier than the frail form he had tolerated for so long, and his thoughts were swifter and clearer than they had ever been. yet there was an emptiness gnawing at his mind, an inexpressible hollowness of spirit that defied rational explanation. In that moment, he knew with cold certainty that the price of physical immortality had been the loss of his soul. With great sorrow the Silent King beheld the fate he had brought upon his people: the Necrontyr were not but a memory, and the soulless, undying Necrons had been reborn in their place.

Yet if the price had been steep, biotransference had fulfilled all of the promises that the C'tan had made. Even the lowliest of the Necrontyr was now blessed with immortality - age and hard radiation could little erode their new mechanical bodies, and only the most terrible of injuries could destroy them utterly. Likewise, the Necrons now enjoyed a unity that the Necrontyr had never known, though it was achieved through tyranny and the complete loss of individuality and emotion rather than by consent. The biotransference process had embedded command protocols in every Necron mind, granting Szarekh the unswerving loyalty of his subjects. At first, the Silent King embraced this unanimity, for it was a welcome reprieve from the chaos that had consumed the Necrontyr Empire in recent years. However, as time wore on he grew weary of his burden but dared not sever the command protocols, lest his subjects turn on him seeking vengeance for the terrible curse he ahd visited upon them.

Thus the Necrontyr became the Necrons, cursed to the eternal servitude of their Star Gods. The C'tan feasted upon the entire Necrontyr race's life energies even as they made the transfers, leaving behind only the ghostly echoes of the Necrontyr's consciousnesses. Only a few of the most strong-willed Necrontyr retained their intellect and self-awareness and even they were but shadows of their former selves. They had been purged of so much of what had made them unique individuals. The Necrons cared not at all for their loss; all that mattered to them was that they would live forever without disease or death as their Star Gods had promised. Nevertheless, the Necrontyr species was united as never before. The process imbued in every one of the Silent King's subjects the command protocols with which he would rule over them with an iron hand. The entire species was his to command, and so it fell upon the Necrons to honour their side of their terrible bargain. Renewed by their devouring of the souls of an entire species, the C'tan were unstoppable, and with the legions of the Necrons marching in their wake, the Old Ones were doomed. Only one thing truly remained of the old Necrontyr - their burning hatred for all the other living, intelligent species of the universe. Legions of the undying living metal warriors set out into the galaxy in their Tomb Ships and the stars burned in their wake. The Old Ones' mastery of the Warp was now countered by the C'tan's supremacy over the physical universe and the ancient enemies of the Necrons suffered greatly in the interstellar slaughter that followed.

The Necrons Ascendant

With the C'tan and the Necrons fighting as one, the Old Ones were now doomed to defeat. Glutted on the life force of the Necrontyr, the empowered C'tan were night unstoppable and unleashed forces beyond comprehension. Planets were razed, suns extinguished and who star systems devoured by black holes called into being by the reality-warping powers of the Star Gods. Necron legions finally breached the Webway and assailed the Old Ones in every corner of the galaxy. They brought under siege the fortresses of the Old Ones' many allies amongst the younger intelligent races of the galaxy, harvesting the life force of the defenders to feed their voracious C'tan masters.

In the closing years of the War in Heaven, one of the primary factors that led to the Necrons' ascendancy was their ability to finally gain access to the Old Ones' Webway. The C'tan known as Nyadra'zath, the Burning One, had long desired to carry his eldritch fires into that space beyond space, and so showed the Necrons how to breach its boundaries. Through a series of living stone portals known as the Dolmen Gates, the Necrons were finally able to turn the Old Ones' greatest weapon against them, vastly accelerating the ultimate end of the War in Heaven.

The portals offered by the Dolmen Gates are neither so stable, nor so controllable as the naturally occurring entrances to the Webway scattered across the galaxy. Indeed, in some curious fashion, the Webway can detect when its environs have been breached by a Dolmen Gate and its arcane mechanisms swiftly attempt to seal off the infected spur from the rest of the Labyrinthine Dimension until the danger to its integrity has passed. Thus, Necrons entering the Webway must reach their intended destination through its shifting extradimensional corridors quickly, lest the network itself bring about their destruction.

Of course, in the present age, aeons have passed since the Necrons used the Dolmen Gates to assault their archenemies. The Old Ones are gone, and the Webway itself has become a tangled and broken labyrinth. Many Dolmen Gates were lost or abandoned during the time of the Necrons' Great Sleep, and many more were destroyed by the Eldar, the Old Ones' successors as the guardians of the Webway. Those that remain grant access to but a small portion of the immense maze that is the Webway, much of that voluntarily sealed off by the Eldar to prevent further contamination. Yet the Webway is immeasurably vast, and even these sundered skeins allow the Necrons a mode of travel that far outpaces those of the younger races. It is well that this is so. As a race bereft of psykers as a result of the loss of their souls during the biotransference process, the Necrons are also incapable of Warp travel, and without access to the Webway, they would be forced to rely once more on slow-voyaging stasis-ships, dooming them to interstellar isolation.

In the wake of these victories, the C'tan and their undying Necron servants now dominated the galaxy. The last planetary bastions of the Old Ones were besieged and the intelligent races they had once nurtured became cattle for the obscene hunger of the C'tan. To the younger sentient species of the galaxy, the Necrons and their Star Gods were cruel masters, callously harvesting their populations at will to feed the C'tan's ceaseless hunger. The C'tan were figures of terror who demanded their adoration and fear in equal measure. For unknown reasons, but probably because their individual hungers for mortal life energies knew no bounds, the C'tan ultimately began to fight amongst themselves for both sport and out of spite as they unleashed destructive forces beyond mortal comprehension. Among the Eldar, an ancient myth holds that their Laughing God tricked the C'tan known as the Outsider into turning on its brothers and beginning their long war for ascendancy. In the course of the C'tan's struggle against one another, whole planets were razed, stars were extinguished and whole solar systems were devoured by unleashed black holes. New cities were built by the efforts of millions and then smashed down once more. As the "red harvests" of the C'tan and their Necron servants grew thin, C'tan eventually devoured C'tan, until only a few were left in the universe and they competed amongst themselves for a long age.

Eventually, even the Old Ones, who had once been defined by their patience and unstoppable will, became desperate in the face of the Necron assault. They used their great scientific skills to genetically engineer intelligent beings with an even stronger psychic link to the Warp, hoping to create servants with the capability of channeling psychic power to defend themselves. They nurtured many potential warrior races, among which are believed to be the earliest members of the Eldar species and many other xenos races, including the Rashan, the K'nib, the Krorkand many others. Millennia passed as the Old Ones' creations finally bore fruit and the C'tan and their Necron servants continued to extinguish life across the galaxy.

The Tide Turns

The Old Ones' psychically-empowered servant races spread across the galaxy, battling the advanced Necron technology with the psychic power of their Warp-spawned sorcery. Facing this new onslaught, the C'tan's empire was shattered, as the psychic forces of the Immaterium were anathema to soulless entities whose existence was wholly contained within purely physical patterns of electromagnetic force. For all the destruction they could unleash, they were unable to stop the Old Ones and the younger races' relentless advance across the stars.

The C'tan, unified by this great threat for the first time in millions of years, sought a way to defeat the soul-fuelled energies of the younger species. They initiated a great warding, a plan to forever defeat the psychic sorceries of the Old Ones by sealing off the material universe from the Warp, a plan whose first fruits can still be found on the Imperial Fortress World of Cadia in the form of the great pylons that litter the surface of that world in intricate networks and create the area of space-time stability near the Eye of Terror known as the Cadian Gate. With their god-like powers, it was only a matter of time until the C'tan succeeded and the greatest work of the C'tan was begun. But before it was complete, the seeds of destruction the Old Ones had planted millennia before brought about an unforeseen cataclysm. The growing pains and collective psychic flaws of the younger races threw the untapped psychically reactive energies of the Immaterium into disorder. War, pain and destruction were mirrored in the bottomless depth of the Sea of Souls that was the Warp. The maelstrom of souls unleashed into the Immaterium by the carnage of the War in Heaven coalesced in the previously formless energies of the Warp. Older entities that had existed within the Immaterium transformed into terrifying psychic predators, tearing at the souls of vulnerable psykers as their own environment was torn apart and reforged into the Realm of Chaos.

The Enslaver Plague

The denizens of the Warp clustered voraciously at the cracks between the Immaterium and the material universe, seeking new ways to enter the physical realm. The Old Ones brought forth new genetically-engineered warrior races to defend their last strongholds, including the technology-mimicking Jokaero and the formidable, green-skinned Krork who were the ancestors of the present day Orks, but it was already too late. The Old Ones' intergalacticWebway network was breached from the Immaterium and lost to them, several of their Warp Gates were destroyed by their own hands to prevent the entities of the Warp from spreading to uncorrupted worlds and Old Ones' greatest works and places of power were overrun by the horrors their own creations had unleashed. The most terrifying of these horrors were the Enslavers, Warp entities whose ability to dominate the minds of the younger races and create their own portals into the material realm using transmuted possessed psykers brought them forth in ever greater numbers. For the Old Ones, this was the final disaster as the Enslavers took control of their servants. The Pandora's Box unleashed by the creation of the younger races finally scattered the last of the Old Ones and broke their power over the galaxy once and for all. Life had stood at the edge of an apocalypse during the War in Heaven between the Old Ones and the C'tan. Now as the Enslavers breached the Immaterium in epidemic proportions, the survivors looked doomed.

Ultimately, beset by the implacable onset of the C'tan and the calamitous Warp-spawned perils they had themselves mistakenly unleashed, the Old Ones were defeated, scattered and finally destroyed. Whether the species went extinct or simply fled the galaxy to seek a new haven elsewhere is unknown.

The Silent King's Betrayal

Throughout the final stages of the War in Heaven, Szarekh bided his time, waiting for the moment in which the C'tan would prove vulnerable. Though the entire Necron race was now his to command, he could not hope to oppose the C'tan at the height of their power, and even if he did and met with success, the Necrons would then have to finish the War in Heaven against the Old Ones and their increasingly potent allies alone. No, the Old Ones had to be completely and utterly defeated before the C'tan could be brought to account for the horror they had wrought. And so, when the C'tan finally won their great war, their triumph proved short-lived. With one hated enemy finally defeated, and the other spend from hard-fought victory, the Silent King at last led the Necrons in revolt against the C'tan masters.

In their arrogance, the C'tan did not realise their danger until it was too late. The Necrons focussed the unimaginable energies of the living universe into weapons too mighty for even the Star Gods to endure. Alas, the C'tan were immortal star-spawn, part of the fundamental fabric of reality and therefore nigh impossible to destroy. So was each C'tan instead sundered into thousands of smaller and less powerful fragments with a similar energy signature. yet this was sufficient to the Silent King's goals. Indeed, he had known the C'tan's ultimate destruction to be impossible and had drawn his plans accordingly; each C'tan Shard was bound within a multidimensional Tesseract Labyrinth, as tramelled and secured as a Terran djinn trapped in a bottle. Though the cost of victory was high - millions of Necrons had been destroyed as a consequence of the rebellion, including all of the members of the Triarch save the Silent King himself - the Necrons were once more in command of their own destiny.

C'tan Shards

A C'tan Shard is all that remains of the once mighty Star Gods of Necron antiquity. They are now only echoes of their former selves, splinters of energy that survived their Necron servants' ancient betrayal and were enslaved in turn. Most now languish in unbreakable servitude to their former vassals, utterly incapable of acting without commission. Should a C'tan Shard rebel, or a fault develop in its control relays, then fail-safe mechanisms automatically activate, whisking the creature back to its tomb, there to languish for long Terran centuries until times are dire enough that the Necrons must call upon its services again. Even with these precautions, the Necrons are wary of employing C'tan Shards in battle. Though the chance of escape is remote, the possibility remains, so the day must be dark indeed for the Necron cause before the Tesseract Labyrinths are opened and the C'tan unleashed upon the galaxy once again. In the late 41st Millennium, the foes of the Necrons have so far only encountered two types of C'tan Shard, those of Aza'gorod the Nightbringer and Mephet'ran the Deceiver.

Even now in their reduced and wholly fettered state, C'tan Shards are beings of near-unlimited power. They can manifest energy blasts, control the minds of lesser beings, manipulate the flow of time, and banish foes to alternate dimensions. Indeed, a C'tan Shard's abilities are limited only by two things: its imagination - which is immense - and glimmering memories of the being from which it was severed. Whilst no individual C'tan Shard has full recall of the omnipotent beings it once was, each carries the personality and hubris of that vaster and more puissant being. Though a C'tan Shard has the power to reduce a tank to molten slag with but a gesture, it might simply not occur to it to do so, as its gestalt primogenitor would have tackled the situation through other means, such as by devolving the crew into primordial ooze, or deceiving them into attacking their own allies. The only hope of defeating a C'tan is to breach its Necrodermis shell - the living metal form that cages its energetic essence. If the Necrodermis is compromised, the C'tan Shard explodes in a pulse of blinding energy, its being scattered to the galactic solar winds.

Whilst it is true that many C'tan Shards are now indentured to Necron service, this by no means accounts for the entire pantheon of C'tan. Rumours of C'tan-like beings can be found across the galaxy, though many are merely entities that exhibit inexplicable reality-warping powers. Indeed, any such being - whether Warp-spawned daemon, energy-based life form or an alien with advanced technology - can be mistaken for a C'tan if the observer is primitive, credulous or simply ill-informed enough. This discrepant information causes great confusion concerning the exact number and nature of the surviving C'tan, even among the Eldar. Records held in the Black Library contradict those maintained on Ulthwe, which are again at odds with the archives held on Alaitoc. There might be four C'tan at present in the galaxy, four thousand or any number in between. However, all Eldar agree that the splinters of knowledge held by the Imperium of Man are so flawed and confused that they, if anything, move further from the truth with each fresh discovery made. Any who go looking for proof of a C'tan's existence can easily uncover it, but this speaks more to the mindset of the searcher than it does to any value of the "evidence."

Transcendent C'tan

Transcendent C'tan are the most dangerous of their kind amongst the C'tan Shards. Each is an aggregation of anywhere between a dozen and a hundred lesser C'tan Shards, and its power far surpasses the sum of its parts. Those few that are chained to Necron service are not contained by Tesseract Labyrinths, but by energy shackles designed aeons ago by the legendary Necron artificer Svarokh. Such devices are unstable, making the deployment of a Transcendent C'tan without the device known as aTesseract Vault to contain it something of a risk, only undertaken in times of direst need. For this reason, when contained within a Tesseract Vault, a Transcendent C'tan is also kept within a special energy shield generated by a robotic Necron construct known as aCanoptek Sentinel. Canoptek Sentinels are used to control the raw elemental energies of a Transcendent C'tan. The Sentinel draws from the Transcendent C'tan's own power to generate a force shield strong enough to keep the C'tan shackled to the mechanisms of the Tesseract Vault. At the same time, constructs known as Canoptek Leeches arrayed and docked around the circumference of the vault and an army of Canoptek Scarabs move to constantly repair the damage done to the arcane prison. However, there are only so many Scarabs and Canoptek Leeches holding the Tesseract Vault together, and as the Transcendent C'tan bends reality and tears metal off the vault in its bids for freedom, the Canoptek automatons rebuild its prison using the debris in a cyclical process of destruction and reconstruction.

Known C'tan

The C'tan who are known to currently still exist include:

**Aza'gorod the Nightbringer** - Aza'gorod the Nightbringer has impressed its image as that of the grim reaper itself on the psyche of the younger races, apart from the Orks (since they do not fear death). Upon entering stasis it was almost destroyed and starved but was released accidentally by the Space Marines in the 41st Millennium, which caused the Necrons to begin to awaken from their ancient sleep. The Nightbringer is one of the two types of C'tan Shard that have so far been encountered by the foes of the Necrons since their Great Awakening.**Mephet'ran the Deceiver** - Mephet'ran the Deceiver came out of stasis an unknown time ago and has been weaving plots ever since, including the destruction of the ancient Old Ones weapons the Eldar call theTalismans of Vaul and the Imperium knows as the Blackstone Fortresses which were designed to destroy the C'tan on their emergence. The Deceiver is the second of the two types of C'tan Shard that have so far been encountered by the foes of the Necrons since their Great Awakening.**Mag'ladroth the Void Dragon** - Mag'ladroth the Void Dragon is the most powerful C'tan and still resides in stasis, theorised to be located beneath Mars in the Noctis Labyrinthus. The Void Dragon is believed by someTech-priests to be the actual Machine God venerated by the Cult of the Machine of the Adeptus Mechanicus. A master of the material realm, this particular C'tan was a figure of oblivion, devastation and wanton destruction and it's warriors were nigh invincible. No C'tan Shard of this C'tan has yet been encountered, and it is possible that the Void Dragon has remained whole through the eons and its essence was never captured within the Tesseract Labyrinths. This is a truly terrifying prospect for the galaxy if this entity were to awaken.

The names of several other C'tan are known to the Imperium of Man and the Eldar, though they have not yet been encountered as active C'tan Shards and it remains unknown whether they still exist in Necron captivity like their brethren or have ceased to exist.

**Iash'uddra the Endless Swarm** - Nothing is currently known about this C'tan, other than that it exists.**Kalugura** - Kalugura is a C'tan who was captured and transformed into a C'tan Shard. Kalugura was once a horrific engine of destruction. This particular C'tan Shard was entombed on the world of Kalugura aeons ago, at the command of the Silent King Szarekh, then the supreme overlord of the Necron race's ruling Triarch. The reason why this Shard was imprisoned and is no longer deployed by the Necrons is unknown.**Og'driada, the Arisen** - Nothing is currently known about this C'tan, other than that it exists.**Nyadra'zatha the Burning One** - It was the C'tan known as Nyadra'zatha, the Burning One, who had long desired to carry his eldritch fires into the Webway and beyond, who enabled the Necrons to gain access to the Labyrinthine Dimension, showing the Necrons how to breach its boundaries. Through a series of living stone portals known as Dolmen Gates, the Necrons have finally been able to turn the Old Ones' greatest weapon to their own purpose. As a race bereft of psykers, the Necrons are incapable of Warp travel, and without access to the Webway, they would be forced to rely once more on slow-voyaging stasis-ships, dooming them to isolation within the galaxy.**Tsara'noga the Outsider** - Tsara'noga the Outsider became insane due to its consumption of other C'tan, a trick played on it by Cegorach, the Eldar Laughing God. It developed a hellish presence, causing madness in all who came close, and many killed themselves rather than have to face the Outsider. The Outsider shares some similarities with the Nightbringer, in that it is said that to look upon it would cause terror, much like the Nightbringer's infusion of terror in the younger races produced by the Old Ones. Furthermore, one of theHarlequins' many dances depicts the moment when the Laughing God tricked the C'tan into consuming each other, except that the C'tan depicted is the Nightbringer, rather than the Outsider. The Outsider is currently imprisoned in a Dyson Sphere beneath the galactic plane. The Harlequins whisper that "one dark night, it shall return."**Yggra'nya, the Shaper** - Nothing is currently known about this C'tan, other than that it exists.Other C'tan Influences

The Imperial Inquisition employs elite Officio Assassinorum Assassins, among whom, the members of the Callidus Temple, use a weapon called a C'tan Phase Sword. It is unknown what specific relation the weapon has with the C'tan themselves. The most likely explanation would be that the C'tan Phase Sword is made out of Necrodermis, such as in one instance where a Callidus Assassin attacked an Imperial Planetary Governor, only to have her C'tan phase weapon absorbed into the "governor" and become a part of his body. This governor was most likely the C'tan called the Deceiver in another of its myriad disguises.

The primary weakness of the C'tan is their inability to comprehend the Warp. It is speculated that they find it impossible to survive in it and are particularly susceptible as a result to Warp-spawned psychic and the psykers that wield it. It is also speculated that they have set up the networks of pylons on Cadia, with the likely intention of sealing off the local area of realspace (i.e. the galaxy) from the Immaterium. Whether these pylons have anything to do with the existence of the nearby Eye of Terror is unknown, but it is unlikely, as the Eye was not opened until long after the C'tan were already in their stasis tombs. There is also a Necron object of unknown purpose on the Hive World of Armageddon in the Equatorial Jungle regions of the planet.

C'tan Shard

A **C'tan Shard** is all that remains of the once mighty Star Gods ofNecron antiquity. They are now only echoes of their former selves, splinters of energy that survived their Necron servants' ancient betrayal and were enslaved in turn. Most now languish in unbreakable servitude to their former vassals, utterly incapable of acting without commission. Should a C'tan Shard rebel, or a fault develop in its control relays, then fail-safe mechanisms automatically activate, whisking the creature back to its tomb, there to languish for long Terran centuries until times are dire enough that the Necrons must call upon its services again. Even with these precautions, the Necrons are wary of employing C'tan Shards in battle. Though the chance of escape is remote, the possibility remains, so the day must be dark indeed for the Necron cause before the Tesseract Labyrinths are opened and the C'tan unleashed upon the galaxy once again. In the late 41st Millennium, the foes of the Necrons have so far only encountered two types of C'tan Shard, those of Aza'gorod the Nightbringer and Mephet'ran the Deceiver.

Role

Even now in their reduced and wholly fettered state, C'tan Shards are beings of near-unlimited power. They can manifest energy blasts, control the minds of lesser beings, manipulate the flow of time, and banish foes to alternate dimensions. Indeed, a C'tan Shard's abilities are limited only by two things: its imagination - which is immense - and glimmering memories of the being from which it was severed. Whilst no individual C'tan Shard has full recall of the omnipotent beings it once was, each carries the personality and hubris of that vaster and more puissant being. Though a C'tan Shard has the power to reduce a tank to molten slag with but a gesture, it might simply not occur to it to do so, as its gestalt primogenitor would have tackled the situation through other means, such as by devolving the crew into primordial ooze, or deceiving them into attacking their own allies. The only hope of defeating a C'tan is to breach its Necrodermis shell - the living metal form that cages its energetic essence. If the Necrodermis is compromised, the C'tan Shard explodes in a pulse of blinding energy, its being scattered to the galactic solar winds.

Whilst it is true that many C'tan Shards are now indentured to Necron service, this by no means accounts for the entire pantheon of C'tan. Rumours of C'tan-like beings can be found across the galaxy, though many are merely entities that exhibit inexplicable reality-warping powers. Indeed, any such being - whether Warp-spawned daemon, energy-based life form or an alien with advanced technology - can be mistaken for a C'tan if the observer is primitive, credulous or simply ill-informed enough. This discrepant information causes great confusion concerning the exact number and nature of the surviving C'tan, even among the Eldar. Records held in the Black Library contradict those maintained on Ulthwe, which are again at odds with the archives held on Alaitoc. There might be four C'tan at present in the galaxy, four thousand or any number in between. However, all Eldar agree that the splinters of knowledge held by the Imperium of Man are so flawed and confused that they, if anything, move further from the truth with each fresh discovery made. Any who go looking for proof of a C'tan's existence can easily uncover it, but this speaks more to the mindset of the searcher than it does to any value of the "evidence."

Maifestations of Power

C'tan Shards are beings of reality-warping power. Their abilities are many and varied, often harking back to those their far more powerful parent-entities enjoyed. A C'tan Shard is always capable of unleashing two of the following abilities which have been recorded by Eldar scholars.

**Entropic Touch** - Metal decays on contact with the C'tan Shard's rotten grasp.**Gaze of Death** - Eyes blazing with dark energy, the C'tan Shard drains the life from all in the vicinity.**Grand Illusion** - The C'tan Shard weaves a glamour of deception, preventing the foe from seeing the true disposition of the Necron forces.**Lord of Fire** - The C'tan Shard that wields this ability can become a creature of living flame, able to command the fires wielded by the enemy. This makes all Flamer weapons (as well as heat rays, Burnas, Skorchas,Inferno Cannons and any other weapon that uses flame or fire), as well as all Melta Weapons fired near the C'tan Shard may explode at the C'tan whim.**Moulder of Worlds** - Tortured rock buckles and heaves, showering the C'tan Shard's foes with boulders.**Pyreshards** - The C'tan Shard conjures specks of blazing black matter and directs them against its foes.**Sentient Singularity** - The C'tan Shard's presence destabilizes all local gravitational forces, disrupting engines, teleport beams and Warp jumps.**Swarm of Spirit Dust** - A cloud of swirling darkness conceals the C'tan Shard from the gaze of its foes.**Time's Arrow** - Mutating the flow of causation and remoulding the temporal stream of the space-time continuum, the C'tan Shard casts its foe back into the darkness from before time was time.**Transdimensional Thunderbolt** - The C'tan Shard projects a bolt of crackling transdimensional energy from its outstretched palm.**Writhing Worldscape** - The natural world revolts at the C'tan Shard's presence, the very ground writhing and shaking as the physical laws of reality are undone.Ascendant Powers

A Transcendent C'tan is a far more powerful entity than a standard C'tan Shard. As such, Transcendent C'tan are able to unleash these abilities when the Necrons deign to release them upon the battlefield. Every Transcendent C'tan must possess one of the following powers, though they cannot be unleashed when the C'tan is fully shackled within the confines of the Tesseract Vault:

**Storm of Heavenly Fire** - The Transcendent C'tan unleashes a rain of fire from the heavens which explodes with a cataclysmic blast upon the battlefield. This power is extremely effective at destroying enemy tanks and armoured vehicles.**Transliminal Stride** - Using its ability to manipulate the space-time continuum and extradimensional realities, the Transcendent C'tan can move across the battlefield to a predetermined point, simply phasing through all obstacles or opponents in its path.**Seismic Shockwave** - When the Transcendent C'tan slams its Necrodermis-clad foot down, it unleashes a seismic shockwave that causes the very ground to shake, blasting armoured vehicles and infantry alike into the air like unfortunate toys.

A Transcendent C'tan is able to manifest two of the following Ascendant Powers, and can utilise them to devastating effect on the battlefield:

**Antimatter Meteor** - The Transcendent C'tan is able to unleash a huge meteor composed of antimatter upon the battlefield, a furious assault from the sky that will annihilate all normal matter within range.**Cosmic Fire** - The Transcendent C'tan unleashes a wave of fire hotter than the interior of some suns upon the battlefield, incinerating everything in its path.**Seismic Assault** - The Transcendent C'tan causes rumbling earthquakes with a flick of its hand, crushing enemy units to pulp.**Sky of Falling Stars** - A rain of blazing meteorites falls from the sky to impact the foe at the whim of the Transcendent C'tan.**Transdimensional Maelstrom** - The Transcendent C'tan uses its command of transdimensional energies to unleash a swirling extradimensional vortex upon the battlefield that can banish all it touches to an alternate reality.**Wave of Withering** - The Transcendent C'tan can cause metal and flesh alike to wither at its command.

Nightbringer

The **Nightbringer**, known by the ancient Necron name of **Aza'gorod**, and as **Aza'gorod the Nightbringer**, is one of theC'tan, and is the once mighty Star God of death, darkness, and destruction. The Nightbringer is the most evil of the four C'tan known to still exist in the Milky Way Galaxy, and functionally the most powerful that is currently active, since the Void Dragon still lies dormant beneath the red sands of Mars in the Noctis Labyrinth. The Nightbringer is one of the C'tan who was defeated by the Necrons during their great rebellion against the C'tan masters who had forced them into the biotransference of their minds into their undying mechanical forms. The Nightbringer's essence was divided into dozens if not hundreds of C'tan Shards, each held captive within a device known as a Tesseract Labyrinth. Each C'tan Shard is only released by the Necrons when the contingencies of the battlefield have so turned against them that no other weapon will prove able to carry the day. In such circumstances, the Necrons will release a C'tan Shard, whose constituent energy has been sealed within a mechanical body composed of the same living metal Necrodermis as the Necrons themselves. The Nightbringer's C'tan Shard is armed with a powerful C'tan Phase Scythe, and is usually depicted as a dark hooded figure, with gray and black colours similar to the traditional human mythological image of death known as the Grim Reaper. The Nightbringer hungers for death and destruction, and slaughtered the younger races of the Eldar and possibly early humanity to the point that they learned their fear of death from him and his image entered the collective human unconsciousness as the personification of Death. Only the Orks, the descendants of the Old Ones' warrior race known as the Krork, are rumored to have been spared his attentions, and that is why the Orks do not fear death.

Aza'gorod the Nightbringer was one of the omnipotent beings known as the C'tan, who delighted in inflicting pain and suffering not only to feed on the life enrgies of mortals, but simply because it could. The Nightbringer has destroyed entire star systems on a whim and gorged itself on the death agonies of countless billions of lives. The very star under which the Necrontyr race lived their brief, morbid lives gave birth to the vast sun-spanning entity of pure energy that was the Nightbringer, the first of the C'tan to be contacted by the Necrontyr, the intelligent species that ultimately became theNecrons,. This was because Aza'gorod inhabited the Necrontyr's home star, feeding on a steady diet of bland but nourishing solar energy. The Nightbringer was also the first of the C'tan to enter a Necrodermis body prepared for him by the Necrontyr so that he could interact with the matter of the physical universe. The Nightbringer, like the other C'tan, found the souls of living, intelligent beings much more "tasty" than the raw energy of the stars he had been feeding off of for millions of Terran years. The Nightbringer massacred the Necrontyr after being transferred into his new body to feed upon their souls and was only stopped from further feeding upon that race to its extinction by a heavy dose of persuasion and pledges of eternal servitude. During the War in Heaven between the Old Ones and their allies and the C'tan and their Necron servants, the Eldar war god Kaela Mensha Khaine fought the Nightbringer and destroyed him, shattering his Necrodermis host body into countless shards. These shards impaled Khaine, tainting him forever, while the Nightbringer simply transferred his essence into another Necrodermis body that had been prepared for him by the Necron.

War in Heaven

The Nightbringer's earliest history is that of a pioneer and death bringer. Its love of pain and death surpassed even the excesses of the sadistic Dark Eldar, and their Haemonculi could only dream of inflicting the kind of suffering that this twisted Star-God once dealt out on a routine basis. When the Necrontyr first encouraged the C'tan to cross the "incorporeal starlight bridge" into the material realm, the Nightbringer was the first to come and the first to enter a living metal body forged of Necrodermis. The Nightbringer was the first C'tan encountered by the Necrontyr because it was found feeding on the very star that blasted the Necrontyr's homeworld and its presence within their sun was probably responsible for the periodic radiation surges that so shortened the lifespans of the Necrontyr people. Once it had become manifest in material form, the Nightbringer soon learnt of the delight of feeding upon mortal lives and consumed those who had brought it into the material universe. Only through pledges of fanatical loyalty and eternal worship could the Necrontyr convince it to stop destroying their race and concentrate its efforts to feed on the vast expanses of the galaxy. This first episode of mortal consumption led to more destruction on the part of the Nightbringer. Having fed on mortal life, nothing else could now satisfy its hunger and it threw itself into the Necrontyr's battle against the Old Ones. It would lay waste to entire regions of space just to feed.

It is said in Eldar legends that gradually the Nightbringer fell further and further from the Necrontyr's original purpose in bringing it into the material universe, which was the destruction of the Old Ones. It began instead to destroy and feed on intelligent beings at will, and it reached into the minds of almost every intelligent race in the galaxy and planted its image into their deepest fears. It is said that it nurtured entire species to fear it and it then fed on that fear. Eventually, the Nightbringer began to feed on the other C'tan, finding the energetic essences of its fellow Star-Gods to be the most delicious form of life energy it had yet sampled. How it was persuaded to consume other C'tan is explained in several different ways. By some accounts it was another C'tan, Mephet'ran the Deceiver, that convinced the Nightbringer to consume the other C'tan, but another source claims that it was Cegorach, the Laughing God of the Harlequins, who did so in a successful attempt to get the C'tan to turn upon themselves. Soon after the C'tan began to feed upon one another, the Old Ones and their servants counter-attacked the Necrontyr. By this time, only four C'tan remained.

Then the onset of the Enslaver Plague ended the War in Heaven prematurely and forced the C'tan into their stasis tombs on certain Necron Tomb Worlds to await the regeneration of a large population of intelligent lifeforms across the galaxy. The final plan of the C'tan to feed upon all intelligent life in the galaxy was prevented. The Nightbringer's most potent weapon, its scythe, had been banished into the Immaterium during its battle with the Eldar god Khaine where it could not reach it. This prevented the Nightbringer from gathering the necessary energy to break out of its long entombment until it was accidentally freed by the Ultramarines in the late 41st Millennium. The Nightbringer had planted its name as the embodiment of Death in the minds of many races, and is known to the Eldar as Kaelis Ra, the Destroyer of Light, while humanity simply referred to it as the Grim Reaper or Death. Only the Krork and their Ork descendants escaped the fear of death, having never been targetted by the attentions of the Nightbringer.

Awakening of the Nightbringer

The Nightbringer was ultimately buried ten kilometres under the planet of Pavonis' surface, entombed there when its flagship the_Bringer of Darkness_, a _Cairn_-class Necron Tombship, was badly damaged by an unknown alien fleet and crashed on the surface of that world 60 million standard years before the present. The 4th Company of the Ultramarines Space Marine Chapter, led by CaptainUriel Ventris, was sent to Pavonis to guard an Imperial Adept, who was later revealed to be an Inquisitor, who intended to dethrone thePlanetary Governor of Pavonis for failure to pay the world's Imperial tithe. Tensions on Pavonis were running high and eventually a civil war broke out. The cartel that initiated this war was also digging into the recently discovered location of the Necron tomb of the Nightbringer while the Dark Eldar collected the keys that would unlock the Nightbringer's sarcophagus and unleash its horror upon the Imperium. The Dark Eldar intended to reap millions of humansouls to serve as their slaves in the chaos that would ensue.

When the Ultramarines and the Inquisitor heard of the civil war that had broken out on Pavonis, they made best speed for the planet (they were investigating a Dark Eldar raid on another planet in the same star system) and they rescued the Planetary Governor and investigated the cause of the civil war, discovering the cartel's real plan. The Inquisitor was ready to initiate an _Exterminatus_ order upon Pavonis to prevent the opening of the Necron stasis tomb, but Captain Ventris changed his mind and launched an attack on the mine in which the digging took place. Unfortunately, the Nightbringer was awoken as the Space Marines entered the tomb and they tried to combat it. Ventris soon realised that his Astartes could not defeat the Nightbringer, even in its weakened condition, but remembered that the tomb was filled with explosive fumes. Ventris displayed a Melta Bomb and informed the Nightbringer that he did not believe that even it could survive another million years of imprisonment beneath the planet's crust. The Nightbringer stopped its assault following the threat and Ventris and his surviving Astartes retreated from the tomb. The Ultramarines launched an orbital strike on the mine, but, unfortunately, the Nightbringer had already escaped from the planet. After being forced back into the void of space by Ventris, the Nightbringer fled to a distant part of the galaxy where it began to harvest power from nearby stars, slowly rebuilding its strength for the slaughter to come.

Deceiver

The **Deceiver**, also known as **Mephet'ran** or **Mephet'ran the Deceiver** is the C'tan or Necron Star God of trickery, lies, manipulation, and deception. Many millions of years ago, it was the Deceiver that presented himself before the ruling Necrontyr Triarch, and offered Silent King Szarekh knowledge of the biotransferance process, granting them bodies of Necrodermis to help them fight against their ancient enemies, the Old Ones. The Necrontyr agreed and their conciousnesses were transferred into waiting necrodermis bodies by the C'tan. This transfer ultimately dulled their minds and eliminated their emotions and compassion and they became the horrific, soulless Necrons, harvesting life energy across the galaxy to feed their C'tan masters. Despite it's legendary guile, in the end Mephet'ran was betrayed and tricked like his fellow C'tan by the revolting Necrons, his essence shattered into fragments, and each of these fragment was entombed within a Tesseract Labyrinth. However, recent, scattered events hint at the fact that one or more of the C'tan Shards of the Deceiver might still be at large in theGalaxy.

Before the Necron Rebellion

The Deceiver is, as its name implies, a difficult entity to track down. It enjoys using trickery, deception and lies to achieve its own ends. The other C'tan quickly learned to distrust and shun the Deceiver, and its nature was displayed most prominently when the Deceiver tricked the Necrontyr into giving up their organic bodies in favour of metallic necrodermis husks. When the Necrontyr first encountered the Deceiver, they gave it the name Mephet'ran, the Messenger and hoped it would be able to bridge the gap between the Necrontyr and the C'tan.

The Deceiver was the C'tan that offered the Necrontyr an edge during the war with the Old Ones, by using its words to hint at a way to equal their power and ageless wisdom. Eventually this led to the transformation of the Necrontyr into the Necrons, which in turn led to the next major incident in the history of the C'tan. Eldar myth says that the Deceiver was the first to set C'tan on C'tan, convincing them that each other were the "best of all feasts", but despite this the Deceiver remained one of the physically weakest C'tan and only survived by avoiding the more violent C'tan, such as the Nightbringer and the Void Dragon. The Eldar gave the Deceiver the name "the Jackal God" and recorded that it helped both sides in the War of Heaven equally. It then employed a number of guises to accomplish its goals.

Recent Enconters

In recent times, the Imperium has come in contact with either a Shard of the Deceiver directly, or translated accounts of its past accomplishments:

Translation of the Eldar Artefact

An ancient Eldar artefact tells of the signs that will portend the return of the C'tan. It has one line dedicated to the Deceiver, "...and the Jackal-God shall turn brother against brother." This confirms the abilities of the Deceiver in trickery and deceit and also gives a slight reference to time, as the Deceiver would need a longer time to turn brother against brother than the Nightbringer would need to kill them both.

Assassination Attempt

This is an account of the attempt by a Callidus Assassin to assassinate a Planetary Governor named Takis. She used her C'tan Phase Knife and attempted to kill Takis, but she failed and her weapon passed straight through him. He knocked her aside and took her weapon and absorbed it into his hand. We can then probably assume she was absorbed as the last line talks about how her polymorphine drug "gives human essence such a delicate flavouring". The fact that the being could absorb the C'tan Phase Knife meant it could only be a C'tan Shard, as its body was made of the same material as the weapon which would have destroyed anything else. Also, we can assume that it is a Shard of the Deceiver, as he is the only known C'tan with a _modus operandi_ of deception and trickery. This is proof that the Deceiver is operating to attain power in the Imperium of Man for purposes unknown.

Outsider

The **Outsider**, whose true name is **Tsara'noga**, is one of the four remaining C'tan, the Star Gods of the Necrons. The Outsider is probably the most mysterious of the four and very little is known about it. The Outsider, like the other remaining C'tan, was tricked by the Laughing God into feasting upon its fellow C'tan. However, for reasons that can only be speculated at, a fragment of each consumed deity's conciousness remained and plagued the mind of the Outsider, driving it insane. In its insanity it left the populated area of space and now wanders out in the void, where it fights its inner demons and feeds once more upon the stars that gave birth to it. It also had a hellish presence, and it caused madness in all who came close and many killed themselves rather than having to face the Outsider. While the Outsider cannot match the Nightbringer for pure force, or the Deciever for guile and cunning, it is rumoured to be the most deadly and dangerous of the four remaining C'tan. Should the Outsider return from its self-imposed exile, the galaxy shall bear witness to a culling not seen since the last Necron harvest, which almost wiped out all life in the galaxy and brought about the downfall of the Old Ones.

The Outsider shares some similarities with the Nightbringer, in that in it is said that to look upon it would cause terror, much like the Nightbringer's infusion of terror in the young races produced by the Old Ones. Also, another source gives a dance by the Harlequins of this precise moment when the Laughing God tricked the C'tan into consuming each other, except the C'tan in the story of the dance who was tricked is most definitely the Nightbringer. These similarities are not backed up specifically by any background information and it is therefore unlikely that they are one and the same as there are sources that show many differences between the two entities.

Since the the recent invasion of the galaxy by the Hive Fleets of the Tyranids, it has been speculated by some in the Inquisition that the Outsider is behind the Tyranids' arrival in the Milky Way. He may be the driving force behind the unified Tyranid Hive Mind, as he seeks to destroy the galaxy's defenders with the living weapon that is the Tyranid species. If he is the Tyranids' ultimate master, then there may be no stopping the Tyranids from consuming the Imperium of Man and all who would oppose the C'tan. The Necrons will fully awaken and shall once more harvest all life in the galaxy.

Void Dragon

The **Void Dragon** is believed to be one of the four remaining C'tan, the Necron's Star Gods, in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Void Dragon, if it actually exists, is arguably the most powerful C'tan, particularly after the banishment of the Nightbringer's phase scythe to the Warp by the Old Ones and their Eldar servants during the War in Heaven millions of years ago, although the Nightbringer seems to have had a much more sinister effect on the galaxy as a whole. The Void Dragon is widely whispered to be slumbering in some form beneath the surface of Mars. If what theAdeptus Mechanicus first worshipped as the Omnissiah is truly this sinister xeno entity, as some Tech-priestsseem to believe, there is no telling what the ramifications of this discovery could be. While only speculation at best, it is believed by experts knowledgable on this topic that the Void Dragon is on Mars, likely in the Noctis Labyrinth. This is believed because of the suicide rush by five Necron _Shroud_-class light cruisers that succeeded in penetrating the planetary defences of Mars and then landing on the Red Planet near the Noctis Labrynthus in the late 41st Millennium. In addition, the Chaos Space Marines' Warmaster Abaddon and one of his lieutenants have discovered, through their interactions with the spirits of the Warp, that there is a "New Kind of Death" walking on Mars. The idea of the Void Dragon slumbering beneath Mars was also given credence during the Horus Heresy. During the the outbreak of the Schism of Mars in the early 31st Millennium, it was known by the Master Adepts of the Mechanicus who sided with Horus that the "Dragon of Mars" was hidden in the Noctis Labrynthus, with a Guardian of the Dragon within to keep others away from the entity and to keep the creature secured there. While the Void Dragon was not mentioned by name, it is pertinent given the fact that it provides significant evidence as to the possible location of one of the final two sleeping C'tan in the galaxy - and this dreadful entity lies at the very heart of the Imperium of Man.

C'tan Phase Weapon

A **C'tan Phase Weapon** (also known as a **fractal edged weapon**), is based around a metal blade of unknown composition that, through the use of highly advanced Necron physics, is capable of slicing through any object irrespective of its physical properties. Energy shields, armour and even daemonic bodies are of no defence against a Phase Weapon. Examples of C'tan Phase Weapons include a Callidus Assassin's Phase Sword and the Phase Knife known to be wielded by the Fallen Angel Cypher. However, as a C'tan's Necrodermis is made of the same alloy and has the same properties, attacking a C'tan with a Phase Weapon disarms the attacker, as the metal becomes a part of the C'tan's Necrodermis shell.

These weapons are not only used by the C'tan; the Imperial Inquisition employs elite Officio AssassinorumAssassins, among whom are the members of the Callidus Temple, who make use of a weapon known as the C'tan Phase Sword. In one instance, a Callidus Assassin attacked an Imperial Planetary Governor, only to have her C'tan Phase Weapon absorbed into the "governor" and become a part of his body. This Planetary Governor was most likely the C'tan shard called the Deceiver in another of its myriad disguises.


	2. Chapter 2

Old Ones

The **Old Ones** were an ancient and technologically advanced intelligent race of cold-blooded reptilian beings who established an interstellar empire across the Milky Way Galaxy tens of millions of standard years before the development of most of the other sentient species currently existing in the galaxy. They are the creators of the Eldar and many other intelligent races of the galaxy such as the Slann and the Jokaero, as well as the possible ancestors of the Orks, and are known to Mankindmainly through Eldar mythology.

The Old Ones of _Warhammer 40,000_ lore are an ancient intelligent race of nearly immortal creatures of a slow and cold-blooded intelligence who may have been reptilian in nature. The Old Ones were probably the first species in the Milky Way Galaxy to have evolved sentience (though the C'tan, born at the creation of the galaxy, predate the Old Ones, though they did not partake in the affairs of the galaxy until the Necrontyr gave them physical bodies just before the War in Heaven). The Old Ones possessed extremely advanced technology and potent psychic powers that made them essentially the masters of the Immaterium. It was the Old Ones who first created the Webway that was later perfected and expanded by their Eldar servants, and they used its corrdiors to travel through the Immaterium instantaneously moving between pairs of Warp Gates established on many planets across the galaxy. A supposedly benevolent and gentle race, the Old Ones appear to have wished to nurture the younger intelligent races of the galaxy and protect them from the depredations of the C'tan. It is possible that the Old Ones are the same Old Ones that the Lizardmen worship in the_Warhammer Fantasy_ universe, as in the Lizardmen army book it states that the Old Ones came from the stars and disocvered the Warhammer World, then proceeded to terraform it and create intelligent races like the Slann, the Elves and the Dwarfs to live upon it. They were inherently patient as a race, and before attempting to journey out into interstellar space they made an extensive study of astronomy and astrophysics, which led them to eventually discover the Immaterium. At the time, the Immaterium was unaffected by the psychic emissions of other intelligent races (since there were so few), and so it was a calm and steady realm of existence. The Old Ones were able to exploit the Immaterium, allowing them to travel across the galaxy at a whim through the development of Warpspace tunneling technology and a network of Warp Gates called the Webway that instantaneously connected their far-flung interstellar colonies.

On their travels, the Old Ones seeded many other worlds across the galaxy with life, and encouraged the development of indigenous intelligent life on many more, including Terra.

It should be noted that the Old Ones in the _Warhammer 40,000_ universe may be related to the Old Ones of the H.P. Lovecraft mythos. The term "Old Ones" often applied to the Great Old Ones or the Elder Things which created life on Earth (Terra) in the H.P. Lovecraft mythos.

The War in Heaven

Before the creation of the Eldar, the Old Ones were at war with the Necrontyr over 60 million Terran years ago. One of the few already sentient races the Old Ones had encountered were the humanoid Necrontyr, who at the time were in the midst of a slow, sublight interstellar expansion to distant planets beyond the home star system. The lives of the Necrontyr were short and painful due to the deadly radiation of their world's sun. When they met the Old Ones, they developed a deep, jealous hatred of them due to their near-immortal lifespans. This resentment led to the first war ever fought in the galaxy. The Necrontyr's war was futile and they were forced back to their remote world in the outer rim of the galaxy's Halo Stars. The fury of the Necrontyr cooled over thousands of years of imprisonment, but they turned their hatred against all life rather than just the Old Ones.

The Necrontyr had studied their star for millions of years. In their quest for a weapon to use against the Old Ones, they found the C'tan. Gradually they managed to communicate with these ethereal beings of pure energy who fed on the solar energy of the stars, but the C'tan knew they would never be able to fully comprehend the material universe without a material body. So the Necrontyr built the living metal bodies from the alloy they called necrodermis that the C'tan are still adorned with. The C'tan were soon worshiped by the Necrontyr as their Star Gods, as their powers and intelligence were far beyond anything the Necrontyr had experienced before, even in their encounters with the Old Ones. As the C'tan became more manifest in their new physical bodies, they began to enjoy certain aspects of life more, including pain, suffering and slavery. Eventually, with the Star Gods themselves at their sides, the Necrontyr were ready to begin their war with the Old Ones anew.

The Necrontyr were vastly outclassed technologically and would not have posed much of a threat to the Old Ones, had not a twist of fate led them to discover the C'tan who dwelled within the hearts of stars across the galaxy, including the Necrontyr's own home star. The Necrontyr offered the C'tan physical bodies made of living metal called necrodermis and renewed their ancient war with the Old Ones, now with the added might of their powerful C'tan Star Gods. The C'tan next offered the Necrontyr escape from the curse of their short lives. The C'tan offered to transfer the Necrontyr's minds into living metal bodies comprised of necrodermis, much like the C'tan themselves. The C'tan eventually tricked the Necrontyr into transferring their own consciousnesses into robotic bodies made out of the same necrodermis material. They did so and discovered to their horrors that their new bodies erased their psychic impressions in the Warp, effectively rendering them as soulless as the C'tan themselves. Whether the Necrontyr knew what they would lose by doing this will never be known, but the process essentially destroyed their race. They gained the immortality they had so craved but lost their free-will. Their minds were dulled and only a few members of the race, the Necron Lords, retained any independent thought. Unfortunately, the side effect of this process was that the Necrontyr, now calling themselves the Necrons, gradually lost the ability to feel any emotions at all and became the soulless, mechanical slaves of the C'tan, culling the sentient lifeforms the C'tan craved as sustenance in the terrible "Red Harvests." With the Necrontyr destroyed and the terrible new species called the Necron born, the C'tan began the war against the Old Ones once more with their legions of undying warriors, the cosmic confrontation that would later become known to the Eldar as the War in Heaven.

To combat these terrible foes, the Old Ones created new warrior races to battle for them, including the Eldar, the Rashan, the K'nib and the Krork, who may be the ancestors of the Orks. Knowing that the C'tan were vulnerable to psychic energies, the Old Ones designed their warrior species to be psychically linked to the Immaterium. Unfortunately, the raw emotions and collective unconscious beliefs of these new races altered the psychically-active Immaterium, creating their Gods and the daemons of Chaos. The introduction of these warlike and psychic races into the galaxy had the side effect of warping the Immaterium - the war, pain, suffering and destruction of the galaxy unleashed during the conflict was reflected in the Immaterium, literally changing its nature into that of the current chaotic and intrinsically hostile psychic dimension called the Warp. The innocuous entities which had naturally existed in the Immaterium were twisted into voracious and hostile predators. The Old Ones were ultimately devastated by the aftershocks of what their psychically-active creations did to the Warp, and are now believed to have either gone extinct or fled the galaxy, though the Eldar later built an interstellar empire by extending what remained of the Old Ones' Webway into a Warp tunnel network of their own. The C'tan empire could not counter this new form of psychic warfare. Eventually they became devoted to severing reality's relationship to the Immaterium in order to make psychic powers useless. Yet, even as the C'tan and the Necrons seemed to finally be driven back, the younger races' psychic instability allowed the Enslavers, a terrible species of Warp entities who could enslave the minds of psykers to create living gateways into the material world for others of their kind, to enter realspace. This Enslaver Plague further devastated the population of intelligent beings in the galaxy and ultimately forced the Old Ones into extinction or to flee the Milky Way. The Enslavers' depredations also made it impossible for the Necrons to gather enough sentients to feed the C'tan's ever-growing hunger for life energies. As a result, the galaxy was ultimately saved only because the C'tan and their Necron servants chose to enter hibernation on various "Tomb Worlds" scattered across the stars, where they would sleep for tens of millions of years until the galaxy was filled with enough sentient beings that the C'tan could feed upon them once more.


	3. Chapter 3

Necrons

The **Necrons** are a mysterious race of robotic skeletal warriors that have lain dormant in their stasis-tombs for more than 60 million Terran years and who are the soulless creations and former servants of the ancient C'tan, the terrible Star Gods of Eldar myth. The Necrons are ancient beyond reckoning, predating even the birth of the Eldar. At long last, however, they are beginning to awaken from their Tomb Worlds, for the galaxy is ripe for conquest and the restoration of the Necron Empire since the disappearance of the Old Ones more than 60 million standard years ago. The Necrons are a completely robotic humanoid species whose technological prowess is probably unmatched by any of the other intelligent species of the galaxy. Yet out of a desire for vengeance against the more fortunate long-lived ancientxenos race called the Old Ones, and the trickery of the godlike intelligences known as the C'tan, the Necrons shed their original organic forms and lost all forms of compassion and empathy, becoming ruthless, undying killing machines who are determined to exert their mastery over the galaxy once more.

Across the galaxy, an ancient and terrible race is stirring back to life. Entombed in stasis-crypts for millions of Terran years, they have slumbered through the aeons, waiting for the galaxy to heal from the wounds of a long and bloody war. Now, after sixty million years of dormancy, a great purpose begins. On desolate worlds thought long-bereft of all life, ancient machineries wake into grim purpose, commencing the slow process of revivification that will see those entombed within freed to stride across the stars once again. The implacable, undying Necron legions are rising. let the galaxy beware.

All Necrons, from the lowliest of warriors to the most regal of lords, are driven by one ultimate goal, to restore their ancient ruling dynasties to glory and to bring the galaxy under their rule once more, as it was in ancient days. Such was the edict long ago encoded into the Necrons' minds, and it is a command so fundamental to their being that it cannot be denied. yet it is no small task, for the Necrons are awakening from their Tomb Worlds to find the galaxy of the late 41st Millennium as recorded by the Imperial Calendar much changed. Many Tomb Worlds are no more, destroyed by cosmic disaster or alien invasion. Others are damaged, their entombed legions afflicted by slow madness or worn to dust by entropy's irresistible onset. Degenerate alien races squat amongst the ruins of those Necron Tomb Worlds that remain, little aware of the greatness they defile with their upstart presence. Yet there is no salvation to be found in such ignorance. The undying have come to reclaim their lands, and the living shall be swept aside.

Yet if billions of Necrons have been destroyed by the passage of eternity, countless billions more remain to see their dominion reborn. They are not creatures of flesh and blood, these Necrons, but android warriors whose immortal forms are forged from living metal. As such, they are almost impervious to destruction, and their mechanical bodies are swift to heal even the gravest wounds. Given time, severed limbs reattach, armour plating reknits and shattered mechanical organs are rebuilt. The only way, then, to assure a Necron's destruction is to overwhelm its ability to self-repair, to inflict such massive damage that its ancient regenerative systems cannot keep pace. Even then, should irreparable damage occur, the Necron will often simply "phase out" - an automated viridian teleportation beam returning it to the safety of the stasis-crypts, where it remains in storage until such time as repairs can be carried out.

The sciences by which such feats are achieved remain a mystery to outsiders, for the Necrons do not share their secrets with lesser races and have set contingencies to prevent their supreme technologies from falling into the wrong hands. Should a fallen Necron warrior fail to phase out, it self-destructs and is consumed in a blaze of emerald light. Outwardly, this appears little different to the glow of teleportation, leaving the foe to wonder whether the Necron has finally been destroyed or has merely retreated to its tomb. Victory over the Necrons is therefore always a tenuous thing, and a hard-won battle grants little surety of ultimate victory. For the Necrons, defeats are minor inconveniences - the preludes to future triumphs, nothing more. Immortality has brought patience; the perils that the Necrons survived in ancient times carry the lesson their race can overcome any opposition, if they have but the will to try. And if the Necrons possess only a single trait, it is a will as unbending as adamantium.

Only one hope can now preserve the other intelligent races of the galaxy from the Necrons' implacable advance, from the endless legions of silent and deathless warriors rising from long-forgotten tombs. If the Necrons can be prevented from waking to their full glory, if the scattered Tomb Worlds can be prevented from unifying, then there is a chance of survival. If not, then the great powers of the galaxy will surely fall, and the Necrons shall rule supreme for all eternity - undying, cruel and utterly implacable.

The Old Ones

Just as the stars gave birth to their children so the planets of the newborn galaxy eventually gave birth to lifeforms composed of matter which began the long evolutionary climb to self-awareness. The first sentient beings of the Milky Way Galaxy known to have developed a civilisation technologically advanced enough to cross the stars was a reptilian race of beings called the Old Ones by the Eldar, who knew them best. They possessed a slow, cold-blooded, but still deep wisdom, having long studied the stars and raised astronomy and physics to such a level that their science and technology appear to humanity like an arcane art. Their understanding of the workings of the universe were such that they could manipulate alternate dimensions and undertake great works of psychic engineering. Their science allowed them to cross the vast gulfs of space with only a single step through the myriad Warp Gates they built to connect the worlds of the galaxy in a vast network much like the Eldar Webway of today, though on a much larger scale. The Old Ones spread their spawn to many places in the galaxy, but they also knew that all life was precious. Where they passed, they seeded new intelligent species and reshaped thousands of worlds to make them their own according to their predetermined environmental and geographic criteria. It is believed by some in the Adeptus Mechanicus that even Terra felt the Old Ones' touch long before humanity's rise to self-awareness, though this notion is considered heretical at best by the Ecclesiarchy, as the Imperial Creed teaches that Mankind was made in the image of the God-Emperor before his spirit was incarnated in physical flesh millennia ago.

The Old Ones' civilisation reached its height in excess of 60 million years ago. The Old Ones were responsible for the creation or genetic advancement of most of the currently active intelligent species of the galaxy, including theEldar, the Krork (the Orks' precursors), the Slann and the Jokaero, though it is unknown if they played any role in the evolution of humanity. The Old Ones were potent psychics who routinely used the powers of the Warp for a wide variety of technological applications. The Old Ones constructed a system of instantaneous faster-than-light portals through Warpspace that were ultimately adapted to create the Eldar's Webway (and was its more advanced precursor). These portals connected all of the Old Ones' colony worlds across vast swathes of interstellar space.

Birth of the Star Gods

The birth of the entities known as the Star Gods occurred at the same time as the moment of Creation itself, as they formed from the vast, insensate energies first unleashed by that churning mass of cataclysmic force. In that anarchic interweaving of matter and energy, the sea of stars began to swirl into existence and for an eon the universe was nothing more than hot hydrogen gas and light elemental dust ruled over by the gravitic force of billions of newborn suns. Long before the first planets had formed and cooled, the very first truly self-aware beings emerged, their thoughts encased within the lines of force produced by the plasma and electromagnetic flares of the stars themselves. In later times, these entities would become known as the C'tan, but early in their existence they were nothing like the malevolent beings they would eventually become. They were little more than monstrous energy parasites that suckled upon the solar energies of the stars that had brought them into existence, shortening the lives of otherwise main-sequence stars by millions of standard years. In time, these star vampires learned to move on the diaphanous wings of the universe's electromagnetic flux, leaving their birthplaces to drift through the cosmic ether to new stellar feeding grounds and begin their cycle of stellar destruction once more. Beings of pure energy, they paid no mind to the hunks of solid matter they passed in the vacuum of space, the blazing geothermal fires and weak geomagnetic fields of these nascent planets insufficient to be worth feeding even their ravenous hunger.

The Necrontyr and the Wars of Secession

The humanoid species that would become the Necrons began their existence under a fearsome, scourging star in the far reaches of the galaxy known as the Halo Stars region, billions of standard years before Mankind evolved on Terra. Assailed at every moment by ionising solar winds and intense radiation storms, the flesh and blood Necrontyr became a morbid people whose precarious life spans were riven by constant loss. What little information the Imperium of Man has recovered on the Necrontyr tells that their lives were short and uncertain, their bodies blighted and consumed at an early age by the terrible cancers and other illnesses linked to the high levels of ionising radiation given off by their sun. Necrontyr cities were built in anticipation of their inhabitants' early demise, as the living were only brief residents living in the shadow of the vast sepulchres and tombs of their ancestors. Likewise, their ruling dynasties were founded on the anticipation of demise, and the living were thought of as no more than temporary residents hurrying through the more permanent and lasting structures raised to honour the dead. On the Necrontyr homeworld, the greatest monuments were always built for the dead, never the living. Driven by necessity, the Necrontyr escaped their crucible-prison and struck out for the stars, hopeful of carving an empire in which they could realise their species' potential free from the lethal energies of their birth star.

Unable to find peace on their own world, the Necrontyr blindly groped outward into the universe to explore other stars. Using stasis crypts and slow-moving antimatter-powered torch-ships that were clad in the living metal known as necrodermis to resist the millennia-long journeys through the void, the Necrontyr began to colonise distant worlds. Little by little, the Necrontyr dynasties spread ever further, until much of the ancient galaxy answered to their rule. From the earliest days, the rulers of individual Necrontyr dynasties were themselves governed by the Triarch, a council composed of three Phaerons. The head of the Triarch was known as the Silent King, for he addressed his subjects only through the other two Phaerons who ruled alongside him. Nominally a hereditary position, the uncertain life spans of the Necrontyr ensured that the title of Silent King nonetheless passed from one royal dynasty to another many times. The final days of the Necrontyr Empire occurred in the reign of Szarekh, the last of the Silent Kings.

Sometime during their slow expansion, the Necrontyr encountered an ancient species far older than any other in existence in the known galaxy. Collectively, these beings were known as the Old Ones, and they were absolute masters of forms of energy the Necrontyr could not even conceive of, yet alone wield. The Old Ones had long ago conquered the secrets of immortality, yet they refused to share the gift of eternal life with the Necrontyr, who yet bore the curse of the bitter star they had been born under. The colonisation of much of the galaxy by the reptilian mystics had been immeasurably swifter and more expansive than that of the Necrontyr because of their Warp Gatesand mastery of the Immaterium. That, and the Old Ones' incredibly long, if not downright immortal lifespans, kindled a burning, jealous rage in the Necrontyr, which ate at their culture spiritually as much as their physical cancers consumed their bodies. The Necrontyr were astonished to learn that another intelligent species enjoyed such long lives while their own were cut so brutally short.

But as time wore on, further strife came to the Necrontyr. Each dynasty of the Necrontyr sought to claim its own destiny and soon the great houses were engaged in all-out conflicts known as the Wars of Secession. Had circumstances remained as they were for but a generation more, it is possible that the Necrontyr would have wiped themselves out, as so many species had before them and shall do in the future. As their territory grew ever wider and more diverse, the unity that had made them strong was eroded, and bitter wars were waged as entire realms fought to win independence. Ultimately, the Triach - the ruling council of the Necrontyr Empire- realised that the only hope of unity lay in conflict with an external enemy, but there were few who could prove a credible threat. Only the Old Ones, the first of all the galaxy's known sentient species, were a prospective foe powerful enough to bind the feuding Necrontyr dynasties to a common cause. Such a war was simplicity itself to justify, for the Necrontyr had ever rankled at the Old Ones' refusal to share the secrets of eternal life. So did the Triarch declare war on the Old Ones. At the same time, they offered amnesty to any secessionist dynasties wjo willingly returned to the fold. Thus lured by the spoils of victory and the promise of immortality, the separatist Necrontyr realms abandoned their Wars of Secession and the War in Heaven began.

It was the last of the Silent Kings who headed the Triarch of the Necrontyr Empire, Szarekh, who formulated the plan that would change everything forever and have consequences that would echo through history for countless millions of years. In a typically bitter act of jealousy and resentment for the Necrontyr race, it was the Silent King who used the Old Ones' refusal to share the secret of immortality as a pretext for war, forcibly uniting the entire Necrontyr species beneath the rule of the Triarch against their common foe. War erupted across the stars, yet while the Silent King succeeded in uniting his hateful people, it was a war the Necrontyr could not win. Not on their own.

The War in Heaven

The terrible wars between the Old Ones and the Necrontyr that followed, known later in Eldar myth as the War in Heaven, would fill a library in their own right, but the Necrontyr could never win. Their superior technology was consistently outmanoeuvred by the Old Ones thanks to their mastery of the Webway portals and Warp Gates. The Necrontyr were pushed back until they were little more than an irritation to the Old Ones' dominance of the galaxy, a quiescent threat clinging to their irradiated world among the Halo Stars, exiled and forgotten. The Necrontyr's fury was cooled by their long millennia of imprisonment on their homeworld, slowly transforming into an utter hatred towards all other forms of intelligent life and an implacable determination to avenge themselves upon their seemingly invincible enemies.

But in the face of defeat, the always fragile unity of the Necrontyr began to fracture once more. No longer did the prospect of a common enemy have any hold over the disparate dynasties. Scores of generations had now lived and died in the service of an unwinnable war, and many Necrontyr dynasties would have gladly sued for peace with the Old Ones if the ruling Triarch had permitted it.

Thus began the second iteration of the Wars of Secession, more widespread and ruinous than any that had come before. So fractured has the Necrontyr dynasties become by then that, had the Old Ones been so inclined, they could have wiped out their foes with ease. Faced with the total collapse of their rule, the Triarch searched desperately for a means of restoring order. In this, their prayers were answered,though the price for their species would be incalculably high.

It was during the reign of the Silent King Szarekh that the godlike energy beings known as the C'tan first blighted the Necrontyr. It is impossible to say for certain how the Necrontyr first made contact with the C'tan though many misleading, contradictory and one-sided accounts of these events exist. The dusty archives of Solemnace claim it was but an accident, a chance discovery made by a stellar prove during the investigation of a dying star. The _Book of Mournful Night_, held under close guard in the Black Library's innermost sanctum, tells rather that the raw hatred that the Necrontyr held as a race for the Old Ones sang out across space, acting as a beacon that the C'tan could not ignore.

Another account claims that from the earliest days of their civilisation, Necrontyr scientists had been deeply engaged in stellar studies to try to understand and protect themselves from their own sun's baleful energies. After long, bitter centuries of searching for some power to unleash upon the Old Ones, the Necrontyr researchers used stellar probes to discover unusual electrodynamic anomalies in the oldest, dying stars of the galaxy. In the complex skeins of the energetic plasma of these suns, the Necrontyr found a sentience that was more ancient than that of any of the corporeal species in Creation, including the Old Ones, entities of pure energy that had spawned during the birth of the stars eons before. These entities had little conception of what the rest of the universe entailed when the Necrontyr first found them, feeding upon the solar flares and magnetic storms of these bloated red giants. Here was the weapon the Necrontyr had long sought to bring about the downfall of the Old Ones, beings they believed were the progeny of the death-god they worshipped. Howsoever first contact occurred, the shadow of the C'tan fell over the oldest Necrontyr dynasties first.

The power of these star-born creatures was incredible, the raw energy of the stars made animate, and the Necrontyr called them the C'tan or "Star Gods" in their own tongue. The C'tan were dispersed across areas larger than whole planets, their consciousnesses too vast for humanoids to comprehend. How the Necrontyr ever managed to communicate with them is unknown to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Understanding that such diffuse minds could never perceive the material universe without manifesting themselves in a material form, some Necrontyr actively sought the C'tan's favour and oversaw the forging of physical shells for the C'tan to occupy, cast from the living metal callednecrodermis that they had once used for their colony torch-ships. Fragmentary Eldar legends tell of translucent streamers of electromagnetic force shifting across space as the star vampires coiled into their new bodies in the physical realm across an incorporeal bridge of starlight. Thus clad, the C'tan took the shapes of the Necrontyr's half-forgotten gods, hiding their own desires beneath cloaks of obsequious subservience.

Incomprehensible forces were compressed into the living metal of the necrodermis bodies which the Necrontyr had forged as the full power of the C'tan at last found form. As the C'tan focused their consciousnesses and became ever more aware of their new mode of existence, they came to appreciate the pleasures available to beings of matter and the other realities of corporeal life. The deliciously focused trickles of electromagnetic energy given off by the physical bodies of the Necrontyr all about them awakened a new hunger in the C'tan very unlike the one they had once sated using the nourishing but essentially tasteless energies of the stars.

So it was that one of the C'tan came before the Silent King Szarekh, acting as forerunner to the coming of his brothers. Amongst its own kind, this C'tan was known as the Deceiver, for it was willfully treacherous. Yet the Silent King knew not the C'tan's true nature, and instead granted the creature an audience. The Deceiver spoke of a war, fought long before the birth of the Necrontyr, between the C'tan and the Old Ones. It was a war, he said, that the C'tan had lost. In the aftermath, and fearing the vengeance of the Old Ones, he and his brothers had hidden themselves away, hoping one day to find allies with whom they could finally bring the Old Ones to account. In return for this aid, the Deceiver assured, he and his brothers would deliver everything that the Necrontyr craved. Unity could be theirs once again, and the immortality that they had sought for so long would finally be within their grasp. No price would their be for these great gifts, the Deceiver insisted, for they were but boons to be bestowed upon valued allies.

Thus did the Deceiver speak, and who ca say how much of his tale was truth? It is doubtful whether even the Deceiver knew, for trickery had become so much a part of his existence that even he could no longer divine its root. Yet his words held sway over Szarekh who, like his ancestors before him, despaired of the divisions that were tearing his people apart. For long months he debated the matter with the other two Phaerons of the Triarch and the nobles of his Royal Court. Through it all, the only dissenting voice was that of Orikan, the court astrologer, who foretold that the alliance between the Necrontyr and the C'tan would bring about a renaissance of glory, but destroy forever the soul of the Necrontyr people. Yet desire and ambition swiftly overrode caution, and Orikan's prophecy was dismissed. A Necrontyr year after the Deceiver had presented his proposition, the Triarch agreed to the alliance, and so forever doomed their race.

For their part, the Necrontyr soon fell into awe of their discoveries and the C'tan moved to take control over their benefactors. The powers of the C'tan manifested in the physical world were indeed almost god-like and it was not long before the C'tan were being worshiped as the Star Gods the Necrontyr had named them. Perhaps they had been tainted by the material universe they had become a part of, or perhaps this had always been their nature even when they were bound to the suns they fed upon, but the C'tan proved to be as cruel and capricious as the stars from which they had been born. They soon revelled in the worship of the Necrontyr and feasted upon the life energies of countless mortal slaves.

Biotransference and the Rise of the Necrons"_When the Silent King saw what had been done, he knew at last the true nature of the C'tan, and of the doom they had wrought in his name._"—excerpt from the _Book of Mournful Night_

Armed with weapons of god-like power and starships that could cross the galaxy in the blink of an eye through the use of quantum phase technology, the Necrontyr stood ready to begin their war against the Old Ones anew. But the C'tan had another gift for their mortal subjects. They offered the Necrontyr a path to immortality and the physical stability their race had always craved. Their diseased flesh would be replaced with the living metal of necrodermis that made up their Star Gods' own physical forms. Their discarded organic husks would be consumed and their cold, metal forms would then be free to pursue their great vengeance against the Old Ones and the rest of a hateful universe, freed forever from the weaknesses of their hated flesh.

With the pact between Necrontyr and C'tan sealed, the Star Gods revealed the form that immortality would take for the Necrontyr, and the great biotransference process began. Colossal bio-furnaces built by Necrontyr artifice roared day and night, consuming weak-bodied flesh and replacing it with enduring machine forms of living metal, much like the C'tan themselves. As the cyclopean machines clamoured, the C'tan swarmed about the biotransference sites, drinking in the torrent of cast-off life energy and growing ever stronger.

Whether the Necrontyr actually realised the price they would actually pay for accepting this pact with the C'tan is not known. The immortality the C'tan promised would be delivered unto the Necrontyr by way of the arcane and terrible process of bio-transference. Vast bio-foundries were constructed, and into these the Silent King's peoples marched according to the terms of the pact he had made with the C'tan. What blasphemous procedures the Necrontyr were subjected to within the raging bio-furnaces cannot be known, but certainly, each was stripped of flesh and of soul, his body replaced by a shell of living metal animated by what remained of his guttering self. Above each furnace swooped and dove the ethereal true-forms of the C'tan as they glutted themselves on the spiritual detritus of an entire species. It was only when the Silent King himself emerged from the bio-transference process and looked upon what had become of his people that he saw the awful truth of the pact he had made. Though immortality and nigh godlike strength and vigour were his, it had come at the cost of his soul, the effluvial remains of which had already been sucked down the gullet of a circling C'tan.

As Szarekh watched the C'tan feast on the life essence of his people, he realised the terrible depth of his mistake. In many ways, he felt better that he had in decades, the countless aches and uncertainties of organic life now behind him. His new machine body was far mightier than the frail form he had tolerated for so long, and his thoughts were swifter and clearer than they had ever been. yet there was an emptiness gnawing at his mind, an inexpressible hollowness of spirit that defied rational explanation. In that moment, he knew with cold certainty that the price of physical immortality had been the loss of his soul. With great sorrow the Silent King beheld the fate he had brought upon his people: the Necrontyr were not but a memory, and the soulless, undying Necrons had been reborn in their place.

Yet if the price had been steep, biotransference had fulfilled all of the promises that the C'tan had made. Even the lowliest of the Necrontyr was now blessed with immortality - age and hard radiation could little erode their new mechanical bodies, and only the most terrible of injuries could destroy them utterly. Likewise, the Necrons now enjoyed a unity that the Necrontyr had never known, though it was achieved through tyranny and the complete loss of individuality and emotion rather than by consent. The biotransference process had embedded command protocols in every Necron mind, granting Szarekh the unswerving loyalty of his subjects. At first, the Silent King embraced this unanimity, for it was a welcome reprieve from the chaos that had consumed the Necrontyr Empire in recent years. However, as time wore on he grew weary of his burden but dared not sever the command protocols, lest his subjects turn on him seeking vengeance for the terrible curse he ahd visited upon them.

Thus the Necrontyr became the Necrons, cursed to the eternal servitude of their Star Gods. The C'tan feasted upon the entire Necrontyr race's life energies even as they made the transfers, leaving behind only the ghostly echoes of the Necrontyr's consciousnesses. Only a few of the most strong-willed Necrontyr retained their intellect and self-awareness and even they were but shadows of their former selves. They had been purged of so much of what had made them unique individuals. The Necrons cared not at all for their loss; all that mattered to them was that they would live forever without disease or death as their Star Gods had promised. Nevertheless, the Necrontyr species was united as never before. The process imbued in every one of the Silent King's subjects the command protocols with which he would rule over them with an iron hand. The entire species was his to command, and so it fell upon the Necrons to honour their side of their terrible bargain. Renewed by their devouring of the souls of an entire species, the C'tan were unstoppable, and with the legions of the Necrons marching in their wake, the Old Ones were doomed. Only one thing truly remained of the old Necrontyr - their burning hatred for all the other living, intelligent species of the universe. Legions of the undying living metal warriors set out into the galaxy in their Tomb Ships and the stars burned in their wake. The Old Ones' mastery of the Warp was now countered by the C'tan's supremacy over the physical universe and the ancient enemies of the Necrons suffered greatly in the interstellar slaughter that followed.

The Necrons Ascendant

With the C'tan and the Necrons fighting as one, the Old Ones were now doomed to defeat. Glutted on the life force of the Necrontyr, the empowered C'tan were night unstoppable and unleashed forces beyond comprehension. Planets were razed, suns extinguished and who star systems devoured by black holes called into being by the reality-warping powers of the Star Gods. Necron legions finally breached the Webway and assailed the Old Ones in every corner of the galaxy. They brought under siege the fortresses of the Old Ones' many allies amongst the younger intelligent races of the galaxy, harvesting the life force of the defenders to feed their voracious C'tan masters.

In the closing years of the War in Heaven, one of the primary factors that led to the Necrons' ascendancy was their ability to finally gain access to the Old Ones' Webway. The C'tan known as Nyadra'zath, the Burning One, had long desired to carry his eldritch fires into that space beyond space, and so showed the Necrons how to breach its boundaries. Through a series of living stone portals known as the Dolmen Gates, the Necrons were finally able to turn the Old Ones' greatest weapon against them, vastly accelerating the ultimate end of the War in Heaven.

The portals offered by the Dolmen Gates are neither so stable, nor so controllable as the naturally occurring entrances to the Webway scattered across the galaxy. Indeed, in some curious fashion, the Webway can detect when its environs have been breached by a Dolmen Gate and its arcane mechanisms swiftly attempt to seal off the infected spur from the rest of the Labyrinthine Dimension until the danger to its integrity has passed. Thus, Necrons entering the Webway must reach their intended destination through its shifting extradimensional corridors quickly, lest the network itself bring about their destruction.

Of course, in the present age, aeons have passed since the Necrons used the Dolmen Gates to assault their archenemies. The Old Ones are gone, and the Webway itself has become a tangled and broken labyrinth. Many Dolmen Gates were lost or abandoned during the time of the Necrons' Great Sleep, and many more were destroyed by the Eldar, the Old Ones' successors as the guardians of the Webway. Those that remain grant access to but a small portion of the immense maze that is the Webway, much of that voluntarily sealed off by the Eldar to prevent further contamination. Yet the Webway is immeasurably vast, and even these sundered skeins allow the Necrons a mode of travel that far outpaces those of the younger races. It is well that this is so. As a race bereft of psykers as a result of the loss of their souls during the biotransference process, the Necrons are also incapable of Warp travel, and without access to the Webway, they would be forced to rely once more on slow-voyaging stasis-ships, dooming them to interstellar isolation.

In the wake of these victories, the C'tan and their undying Necron servants now dominated the galaxy. The last planetary bastions of the Old Ones were besieged and the intelligent races they had once nurtured became cattle for the obscene hunger of the C'tan. To the younger sentient species of the galaxy, the Necrons and their Star Gods were cruel masters, callously harvesting their populations at will to feed the C'tan's ceaseless hunger. The C'tan were figures of terror who demanded their adoration and fear in equal measure. For unknown reasons, but probably because their individual hungers for mortal life energies knew no bounds, the C'tan ultimately began to fight amongst themselves for both sport and out of spite as they unleashed destructive forces beyond mortal comprehension. Among the Eldar, an ancient myth holds that their Laughing God tricked the C'tan known as the Outsider into turning on its brothers and beginning their long war for ascendancy. In the course of the C'tan's struggle against one another, whole planets were razed, stars were extinguished and whole solar systems were devoured by unleashed black holes. New cities were built by the efforts of millions and then smashed down once more. As the "red harvests" of the C'tan and their Necron servants grew thin, C'tan eventually devoured C'tan, until only a few were left in the universe and they competed amongst themselves for a long age.

Eventually, even the Old Ones, who had once been defined by their patience and unstoppable will, became desperate in the face of the Necron assault. They used their great scientific skills to genetically engineer intelligent beings with an even stronger psychic link to the Warp, hoping to create servants with the capability of channeling psychic power to defend themselves. They nurtured many potential warrior races, among which are believed to be the earliest members of the Eldar species and many other xenos races, including the Rashan, the K'nib, the Krorkand many others. Millennia passed as the Old Ones' creations finally bore fruit and the C'tan and their Necron servants continued to extinguish life across the galaxy.

The Tide Turns

The Old Ones' psychically-empowered servant races spread across the galaxy, battling the advanced Necron technology with the psychic power of their Warp-spawned sorcery. Facing this new onslaught, the C'tan's empire was shattered, as the psychic forces of the Immaterium were anathema to soulless entities whose existence was wholly contained within purely physical patterns of electromagnetic force. For all the destruction they could unleash, they were unable to stop the Old Ones and the younger races' relentless advance across the stars.

The C'tan, unified by this great threat for the first time in millions of years, sought a way to defeat the soul-fuelled energies of the younger species. They initiated a great warding, a plan to forever defeat the psychic sorceries of the Old Ones by sealing off the material universe from the Warp, a plan whose first fruits can still be found on the Imperial Fortress World of Cadia in the form of the great pylons that litter the surface of that world in intricate networks and create the area of space-time stability near the Eye of Terror known as the Cadian Gate. With their god-like powers, it was only a matter of time until the C'tan succeeded and the greatest work of the C'tan was begun. But before it was complete, the seeds of destruction the Old Ones had planted millennia before brought about an unforeseen cataclysm. The growing pains and collective psychic flaws of the younger races threw the untapped psychically reactive energies of the Immaterium into disorder. War, pain and destruction were mirrored in the bottomless depth of the Sea of Souls that was the Warp. The maelstrom of souls unleashed into the Immaterium by the carnage of the War in Heaven coalesced in the previously formless energies of the Warp. Older entities that had existed within the Immaterium transformed into terrifying psychic predators, tearing at the souls of vulnerable psykers as their own environment was torn apart and reforged into the Realm of Chaos.

The Enslaver Plague

The denizens of the Warp clustered voraciously at the cracks between the Immaterium and the material universe, seeking new ways to enter the physical realm. The Old Ones brought forth new genetically-engineered warrior races to defend their last strongholds, including the technology-mimicking Jokaero and the formidable, green-skinned Krork who were the ancestors of the present day Orks, but it was already too late. The Old Ones' intergalacticWebway network was breached from the Immaterium and lost to them, several of their Warp Gates were destroyed by their own hands to prevent the entities of the Warp from spreading to uncorrupted worlds and Old Ones' greatest works and places of power were overrun by the horrors their own creations had unleashed. The most terrifying of these horrors were the Enslavers, Warp entities whose ability to dominate the minds of the younger races and create their own portals into the material realm using transmuted possessed psykers brought them forth in ever greater numbers. For the Old Ones, this was the final disaster as the Enslavers took control of their servants. The Pandora's Box unleashed by the creation of the younger races finally scattered the last of the Old Ones and broke their power over the galaxy once and for all. Life had stood at the edge of an apocalypse during the War in Heaven between the Old Ones and the C'tan. Now as the Enslavers breached the Immaterium in epidemic proportions, the survivors looked doomed.

Ultimately, beset by the implacable onset of the C'tan and the calamitous Warp-spawned perils they had themselves mistakenly unleashed, the Old Ones were defeated, scattered and finally destroyed. Whether the species went extinct or simply fled the galaxy to seek a new haven elsewhere is unknown.

The Silent King's Betrayal

Throughout the final stages of the War in Heaven, Szarekh bided his time, waiting for the moment in which the C'tan would prove vulnerable. Though the entire Necron race was now his to command, he could not hope to oppose the C'tan at the height of their power, and even if he did and met with success, the Necrons would then have to finish the War in Heaven against the Old Ones and their increasingly potent allies alone. No, the Old Ones had to be completely and utterly defeated before the C'tan could be brought to account for the horror they had wrought. And so, when the C'tan finally won their great war, their triumph proved short-lived. With one hated enemy finally defeated, and the other spend from hard-fought victory, the Silent King at last led the Necrons in revolt against the C'tan masters.

In their arrogance, the C'tan did not realise their danger until it was too late. The Necrons focussed the unimaginable energies of the living universe into weapons too mighty for even the Star Gods to endure. Alas, the C'tan were immortal star-spawn, part of the fundamental fabric of reality and therefore nigh impossible to destroy. So was each C'tan instead sundered into thousands of smaller and less powerful fragments with a similar energy signature. yet this was sufficient to the Silent King's goals. Indeed, he had known the C'tan's ultimate destruction to be impossible and had drawn his plans accordingly; each C'tan Shard was bound within a multidimensional Tesseract Labyrinth, as tramelled and secured as a Terran djinn trapped in a bottle. Though the cost of victory was high - millions of Necrons had been destroyed as a consequence of the rebellion, including all of the members of the Triarch save the Silent King himself - the Necrons were once more in command of their own destiny.

Fall of the Khansu Dynasty

By no means did all of the Necrontyr people go willingly to the chambers of transformation, but the nobility of the Khansu Dynasty fought the onset of biotransference more than most, and at every turn. When it became clear that no amount of political manoeuvring or manipulation could prevent what was to come, the Khansu Dynasty fought in armed revolt against the Triarch. Yet one Phaeron, no matter how powerful, could not hope to fight the rest of the dynasties and their C'tan masters. Ascendant Prince Rakszan was one of the few nobles amongst the Khansu Dynasty to choose biotransference of his own volition, and he cursed his people for their foolishness in resisting what could be a new age of glory. For his loyalty to the Triarch, Rakszan was granted high military rank and his first campaigns were those that brought his rebellious kinsmen to heel. One by one, Khansu's coreworlds fell, the crownworld of Hamun last of all, and those few rebels that survived were dragged to the chambers of transformation.

At first, Rakszan was pleased, for his people would now have the chance to regain the honour lost in revolt against the Triarch. Yet, as the War in Heaven ground on, he witnessed the C'tan and their underlings systematically destroying his dynasty. Indiginity was added to defeat, with the Necrons of the Khansu Dynasty deployed at the forefront of every battle, or else despatched on campaigns where there was little hope of success and none of survival. Little by little, Rakszan came to realise the terrible depths of his mistake. When the Necron rebellion against the C'tan began, none fought so hard as he to see the Star Gods toppled.

By this time, the Khansu Dynasty was lost forever, its nobles destroyed in the War in Heaven, its Warriors and Immortals seized by other dynasties and reprogrammed to their service. In all the galaxy, only Rakszan remained to speak for his slaughtered kin, and he held himself a traitor to their memory. With no other way remaining to atone for his betrayal, Rakszan swore that he would see every surviving fragment of every C'tan caged, so that they could never again arise. It is a quest that continues to this day...

The Great Sleep

The Necrons had been vindicated in their pursuit only of science and control over the material realm and certainly took pleasure in seeing the Old Ones' civilisation collapse as a result of their over-indulgence of psychic power and the end of the C'tan's domination over their race. Yet even with the defeat of the Old Ones and the C'tan alike, the Silent King saw that the time of the Necrons in the galaxy was over - for the moment, at least. They would allow the Enslavers to take what was left of the sentient life in the galaxy and let it become an interstellar wasteland; the psyker swarm would then die away and in time the galaxy would evolve new lifeforms who would be less sophisticated and easier to dominate. In addition, the Necrons understood that the mantle of galactic dominion was soon to pass to the Eldar, one of the psychically-potent races that had fought alongside the Old Ones throughout the War in Heaven and had thus come to hate the Necrons and all their works with the burning passion that is the defining characteristic of that species. The Eldar had survived where the Old Ones had not and the Necrons, weakened by their expenditure of lives and resources in overthrowing the rule of the C'tan, could not stand against them. Yet the Silent King knew that the time of the Eldar would eventually pass, as it must pass for all those beings still cloaked in the flesh. It would take millions of Terran years for the Eldar's power to fade, but what mattered is that the Necrons would be there to take advantage of it.

So it was that the Silent King ordered the remaining Necron cities to be transformed into great tomb complexes threaded with stasis-crypts. Let the Eldar shape the galaxy for a time - they were but ephemeral, whilst the Necrons were undying and eternal. The Silent King's final command to his people was that they must sleep for the equivalent of 60 million standard years but awake ready to rebuild all that they had lost, to restore the Necron dynasties to their former glory. This was the Silent King's final order, and as the last Tomb World sealed its subterranean vaults, Szarekh destroyed the command protocols by which he had controlled his people for so long, for he had failed them utterly. Without a backward glance, Szarekh, the last of the Silent Kings of the Triarch, took ship into the starless void of intergalactic space, there to find whatever measure of solace or penance he could.

Meanwhile, aeons passed and the Necrons slept on, their machine slaves and constructs guarding them while they slept on Tomb Worlds that had been purged of all life to keep the Enslavers from their door. This plan worked with an amazing degree of success until the Necrons were awakened by the forces of the Imperium of Man in the late 41st Millennium to plague the galaxy once more. They discovered a new and unexpected age of interstellar civilisation and war much like the one they had left behind 60 million years before. The galaxy is blossoming with life once more but is still overrun with latent psykers and worshippers of the infernal Chaotic Warp energies unleashed during the War in Heaven. It will take time and a great many machinations for the Necron dynasties to regain their rightful place as the rulers of the galaxy; the agents of Chaos must be overthrown; the dangerous Eldar, inheritors of the Old Ones' mantle, eliminated; Mankind subjugated and the great work cutting off the material universe from the Warp completed before a new age of Necron dominion can truly begin. But the Necrons are ageless and undying, their technology still unmatched by any of the younger races. And time is always on their side...

The Great Awakening"_Adversary, know that your squalid colony rests upon a rightful crown world of the Novokh Dynasty. Know also that whilst your presence cannot be tolerated, we are bound by code of honour to allow you opportunity to withdraw. You are therefore granted one solar month, commencing at termination of this transmission, to remove all trace of your presence. If you fail to accept this generous offer, my armies shall conclude these negotiations. We advise you not to mistake honourable warning for lack of resolve._"—Necron ultimatum received by Planetary Governor Mendican Harrow of Imperial Hive World Dhol VI

None can say for sure how many Tomb Worlds entered the Great Sleep, but it is certain that a great many did not survive into the late 41st Millennium. Technologically advanced though the Necrons were, to attempt a stasis-sleep of such scale was a great risk, even for them. For 60 million Terran years the Necrons slept, voicelessly waiting for their chance to complete the Silent King's final order: to restore the Necron dynasties to their former glory. As the centuries passed, ever more Tomb Worlds fell prey to malfunction or ill-fortune. For many, the results were minor, such as a disruption to the operation of the Tomb World's chronostat or revivification chambers, causing the inhabitants to awaken later than intended - but some of the Tomb Worlds suffered more calamitous events.

Cascade failures of stasis-crypts destroyed millions, if not billions, of dormant Necrons. Some Tomb Worlds were destroyed by the retribution of marauding Eldar, their defence systems overmatched by these ancient enemies of the Necrons. Other Tomb Worlds fell victim to the uncaring evolution of the galaxy itself. Tectonically unstable planets crushed Necron strongholds slumbering at their hearts; stars went supernova, consuming orbiting Tomb Worlds in their death throes. And everywhere, inquisitive lifeforms scrabbled and fought over the bones of Necron territories, causing more damage in their unthinking search for knowledge than the vengeful Eldar ever could.

The Great Awakening has been far from precise, and the Necrons have not arisen as one people but in fitful starts over scattered millennia, like some gestalt sleeper rising from a troubled dream. Errors in circuitry and protocols ensured that a revivification destined to take place in the early years of the 41st Millennium of the Imperial Calendar actually began far earlier in a few cases, or has yet to occur at all in others. The very first Tomb Worlds revived to see the Great Crusade of theEmperor of Mankind sweep across the galaxy in the late 30th Millennium. A handful stirred in time to see the Nova Terra Interregnum, when Nova Terra challenged the might of the Golden Throne in the 34th Millennium for 900 years, or arose at the hour in which the Apostles of the Blind King waged their terrible wars that began in 550.M37. Some have still never awoken. Even now, at the close of the 41st Millennium, billions of Necrons still slumber in their stasis-tombs, silently awaiting the clarion call of destiny.

It is rare for a Tomb World to awaken to full function swiftly. With but the slightest flaw in the revivification cycle, the engrammatic pathways of a Necron sleeper scatter and degrade. In most cases, these coalesce over time to restore identity and purpose, but it is a process that can take decades, or even centuries, and cannot be hurried. Sometimes recovery never occurs and the sleeper is doomed forever to a mindless state.

There are thousands of Tomb Worlds scattered throughout the galaxy whose halls are thronged with shambling automatons, Necrons whose minds fled during the long hibernation, and whose bodies have been co-opted by a Tomb World's master autonomic program in an attempt to bring some form of order to their existence. Other Necrons refer to such places as the Severed Worlds, and they loathe and fear their inhabitants in equal measure. None of this is to say that even an individual lucky enough to achieve a flawless revivification awakens alert and aware.

One of the hidden tyrannies of biotransference was how it entrenched the gulf between the rulers and the ruled, for there were not enough resources to provide all Necrontyr with living metal bodies that possessed the density of engrammatic pathways required to retain the full gamut of personality and awareness. Thus, as was ever the case, the very finest necrodermis bodies went to those individuals of the highest rank within Necrontyr society: thePhaerons and Overlords, their Crypteks and Nemesors. For the professional soldiery, the merely adequate was deemed appropriate. As for the common people, they received that which remained: comparatively crude mechanical bodies that were little more than lobotomised prisons for their minds. Numb to all joy and experience, they are bound solely to the will of their betters, their function meaningless without constant direction. Yet even here a tiny spark of self-awareness remains, enough only to torment the Necron with memories and echoes of the past it once knew. For these tortured creatures, death would be far preferable but, alas, they no longer have the wit to realise it or the autonomy to search it out.

A Tomb World is at its most vulnerable during the revivification process. The colossal amounts of energy generated are detectable across great distances, and are an irresistable lure to the inquisitive and acquisitive alike. In these early stages, it is unlikely that the army of a Tomb World proper will have awoken to full function, so defence lies in the hands of the Necrons' robotic servitor constructs - the Canoptek Spyders, Scarabs and Wraiths. Initially these defenders will be directed by the Tomb World's autonomic master program, whose complex algorithmic decision matrix allows it to calculate an efficient response to any perceived threat. As the threat level rises, so too does the intensity of the master program's countermeasures, prioritising the activation of the Tomb World's automated defences and the revivification of its armies according to the needs of the situation at hand. If all goes well, the master program's actions will be sufficient to drive out the invader, or at least stall their progress until the first Necron legions have awoken - at which point the master program surrenders command of the facility to the Tomb World's Necron nobility.

When a large population centre of a younger race of the galaxy has evolved or expanded across the stars close to a Tomb World, the encoded programming delves deep into its data archives and armouries in order to conduct an aggressive defence. Such Tomb Worlds are the ones that have expanded their spheres of influence most rapidly, for its rulers have awakened to find their full military might already mobilised and awaiting their commands. Indeed, the speed with which many Tomb Worlds of the Sautekh Dynasty have recovered lost territory is chiefly attributable to the (ultimately doomed) wave of Ulumeathi colonies established on their coreworlds during the late 39th Millennium.

To external observers, the behaviour of awoken Tomb Worlds must seem eclectic almost to the point of randomness. Some Necron Lords send diplomatic emissaries to other worlds, negotiating for the return of lost territories and technological artefacts, or cast off into the stars, searching for distant Tomb Worlds not yet awoken. Others focus attention inwards, avoiding unnecessary conflict with alien races to pursue internal politics or oversee the rebuilding of their planet to the glory of 60 million years past.

The vast majority of Tomb Worlds, however, take a more aggressive tack, launching resource raids, planetary invasions or the full-blown genocidal purges the Necrons' former C'tan masters once called "red harvests." Yet even here, it is impossible to predict the precise form these deeds will take. Sometimes the Necrons attack in the full panopoly and spectacle of honourable war, rigorously applying their ancient codes of battle. At others, every possible underhanded tactic is employed, from piracy and deception, to assassination and subornation. On other occasions, the campaign is less a martial action than a systematic extermination, the swatting of lesser lifeforms as they themselves would swat insects.

All of these acts, diverse though they are in scope and method, are directed towards a single common goal: the restoration of the Necron dynasties to rule over the galaxy. Yet, with the Triarch long gone and huge numbers of Tomb Worlds lying desolate or still dormant, there can be no galaxy-wide coordination, no grand strategy that will bring about Necron ascendancy. Instead, each Tomb World's ruler must fend for himself, pursuing whatever course he deems most suited to circumstance. For some, this is the domination of nearby threats and the sowing of terror on alien worlds. For others, it might be the recovery of cultural treasures of the lost Necrontyr, the stockpiling of raw strategic materials for campaigns yet to come, or even the search for an organic species whose bodies might prove to be suitable vessels for Necron minds, thus finally ending the curse of biotransference. Indeed, this last matter - the apotheosis from undying machine back to living being - is the key motivating factor for many Necron nobles and royals, for its possibility weighed heavily on the Silent King's mind at the moment of his final command.

All this is further complicated by the fact that the departure of the Silent King and the dissolution of the Necrontyr Empire's Triarch left no clear succession. As a result, the rulers of many Tomb Worlds see an opportunity not only to restore the dynasties of old, but also to improve their standing within the galaxy-wide Necron political hierarchy. The motives of Necron nobles and royals are often muddied by the pursuit of personal power, making accurate divination of an individual's intentions - and therefore of the campaigns conducted by his undying legions - nigh impossible.

Having slumbered in dusty stasis crypts scattered across the galaxy, the Necrons have been slowly awakening, one Tomb World at a time, for several millennia. The process is far from stable, however, for the legions have lain immobile and undreaming for 60 million standard years. It is a staggering feat of science that any Tomb Worlds have survived at all, and many have fallen prey to corruption in their arcane systems, planetary upheaval, and the actions of other species, most of them in ignorance but a few very deliberate indeed. Throughout the long aeons of slumber, the Tomb Worlds' autonomic systems have worked tirelessly to maintain these vast structures and to defend them against the intrusions of the lesser species of the galaxy. It is not known to the Imperium exactly when the first Tomb World initiated its revivification protocols, and it is quite possible that some did so in error well before the ordained time. Only now, as more and more Tomb Worlds awaken, is a pattern becoming visible to those whose mission it is to stand watch upon the trackless reaches of the galaxy and beyond. Piecing together scattered accounts of skull-faced reaper-machines rising from the dust of Dead Worlds the length and breadth of the galaxy, the xenos-savants of the Inquisition are faced with a stark realisation. What at first appeared to be unrelated alien raids serving no overall purpose were, in fact, the heralds of a disaster of galactic proportions.

Having slept so still and for so long, it is not possible for a Tomb World to awaken quickly into a fully alert state. While dormant, each is controlled by a master artificial intelligence program that oversees its essential maintenance and defence, mobilising what resources it judges appropriate to any given situation or threat. As the long awaited time of awakening nears, as best can be judged by the master program, more of its systems are brought online and more of the interred revived. Often, it is the lower order of Necrons, the Necron Warriors and Immortals, that are awakened in the initial phases. These nearly mindless automatons following their lifeless protocols are brought online first, so that the way might be prepared for the more senior members of the dynasty. As each tier in the Necron dynasty's hierarchy is revived, each more intelligent and bearing more individuality than the last, the whole process gradually begins to appear more like the workings of an ancient civilisation and less like that of some great machine. At the allotted time, a Necron Overlord is awakened, and upon his full revival the master program cedes power to its creators. From that point onward, a truly ancient mind leads the Tomb World, and what happens next depends entirely upon his character and ambition.

Some Overlords are cunning and patient, seeking to muster every resource at their disposal before launching the legions into the void to fulfil the destiny of the lost Necron Empire. Others are bellicose and impatient, launching a string of attacks before those other starfaring races settled in the region discover the Tomb World's awakening. While most are likely to assault nearby worlds occupied by sapient races, some have been known to offer such worlds an ultimatum - serve the Necrons, or die. The process of awakening presents a massive danger to a Tomb World. If anything other than miniscule numbers of Necrons are revivified at once, a staggering amount of energy is unleashed, which can be detected within light years and inevitably leads to investigation by ignorant and curious mortal species. Thus, should a Tomb World awaken to find itself lying near (or even beneath!) the territory of a younger species, the massive energy spike might draw such attention that it is overwhelmed before its warriors are able to respond.

Having been awakened and control turned over to an Overlord, the Tomb World must in time take its place in the domains of the Necron dynasty that created it. While many dynasties have never awakened and, due to a variety of disasters never will, many are slowly piecing together their former domains. One world at a time, empires that vanished aeons ago are being rebuilt and long-dormant hierarchies are reasserting themselves once more. At the centre of each of these risen empires is a crown world, the glorious capital and seat of the Phaeron who rules an entire dynasty. Below it are numerous lesser Tomb Worlds and other Necron holdings, though rarely are these anywhere near as extensive as they were in their full glory 60 million years ago.

Necrons in the 41st Millennium

The Necrons are still a shadowy presence rather than a full-fledged force in the galaxy of the present time. They strike out of nowhere without warning, wreak havoc and leave before any major reinforcements can arrive. The origins of these various attacks and their motives are unknown, though it is known that the current Necron forces in the galaxy are only soul harvesters, not the full-fledged fighting machines of the C'tan.

They seem to attack from nowhere often simply appearing at nearly any location in the galaxy, no matter how well-defended. Once in the recent past they touched down on Mars, simply passing by theImperial Navy fleets protecting the Sol System unnoticed, and ultimately casting doubt on the impregnable status of Terra itself. The Necrons reached the Red Planet's surface and explored its subterranean _Noctis Labyrinthus_, perhaps in search of one of theirC'tan masters, believed to be the Dragon of Mars, before being destroyed by the agents of the Imperium. This incident, however, is a heavily guarded secret within the Imperium of Man, which greatly fears that the Necrons may awaken the C'tan known as the Void Dragon which inhabits a stasis tomb beneath the sands of Mars. At the same time, the Imperium has been unable to capture a Necron in an attempt to learn their secrets; entire Necron forces simply vanish into thin air using their phase technology - and they always take their "dead" with them.

The Necron forces come from Tomb Worlds as yet uncharted by the Imperium. Their phase technology allows them to deploy anywhere in the galaxy, almost instantaneously through unknown means, since the Necrons are incapable of entering the Warp. In defeat, they "phase-out" and return to their associated tomb-world for repairs. Any Necrons that have fallen in battle can be repaired there and re-animated so their losses thus far have been minimal. Should a Necron be totally annihilated in battle, then they are truly beyond phase-out or repair, but again, often so little survives that Imperial or Tau scientists (the only two races that want to know more about these deadly enemies) have nothing to study.

The Necrons may have infiltrated the Imperium to an extent. Their elite anti-psyker troops, the Pariah, are an unholy cross of human mutant and Necron technology. But it is believed by Mechanicus savants that the Necrons had thePariah Gene engineered into what became the human gene pool over 65 million Terran years ago. This gene has since manifested itself in the agents of the Culexus Temple, the specialised anti-psyker assassins of the Officio Assassinorum. Recently, however, there has been a dramatic decerase in the use of Necron Pariahs in Necron armies, and the Ordo Xenos believes that these troops may not have proven as effective as Necron commanders had once hoped and are being phased out of the Necron dynasties' order of battle.

Ancient Enemies

Of all the galaxy's great powers, only the Eldar see the Necrons for the threat they truly are to all of the other sentient species - and even they cannot be sure how many Tomb Worlds slumber in the darkness. After the War in Heaven, the Eldar took up a silent watch for any sign of Necron reemergence, and set watch on worlds they suspected of nurturing hidden stasis tombs. Many such worlds were seeded with life and adopted as homes by Eldar outcasts and Exodites, whose descendants would maintain the vigil. Where this was not possible, suspected Tomb Worlds were marked on a great crystal map so that their locations would not be lost as the millennia passed. Yet, as the ages of the galaxy passed, the Eldar became distracted by their own plights and thus forgot the duty they had sworn to uphold for their lost patrons, the Old Ones. By the time of the Fall of the Eldar in the 30th Millennium - the terrible birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh - the slumbering Necrons had been all but forgotten. Only in the Black Library and amongst a few outspoken segments of Eldar society did the vigil continue.

For the Eldar, the Necrons are a nightmare come to life. The children of Isha hold soullessness to be the very worst of all fates, and the Necrons therefore provoke an abiding terror that the Eldar can never truly suppress. For the SeerCouncil of the Alaitoc Craftworld, however, a time of terrible vindication is at hand. The Eldar of Alaitoc remembered their ancient duty whilst their peers forgot. They recovered the fragments of the great map from one of the Crone Worlds of the Eye of Terror, spread their networks of Eldar outcasts and Exodites ever wider and waited for the ancient enemy to return. So it is that whilst most Craftworlds are re-honing half-remembered strategies from the War in Heaven, Alaitoc is reaching its hand, assailing the Necrons on their own territory, sabotaging their Tomb Worlds and bringing the fight to their legions of undying warriors whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Recent Events

In the late 41st Millennium, humanity is widespread throughout the stars of the galaxy and encounters the Necrons with some frequency, but there is no mechanism by which the experiences of one embattled world can be shared with the wider Imperium of Man. Even if there were, by what means would the data be catalogued? Hundreds of human worlds are depopulated or destroyed every year, and if their fates are noted at all by the Administratum, the cause of their demise is rarely discovered. There is no single repository of information in the Imperium, no established central historical record - in a galaxy-spanning civilisation so shrouded in ignorance and superstition, it would be remarkable if it were otherwise.

Some Imperial scholars hold that the slaughter of the Sisters of Battle stationed at Sanctuary 101 in 897.M41 represented the first contact between Mankind and the Necrons. Such men do so in ignorance of the many millions of encounters that, though predating the Sanctuary 101 event, went entirely unremarked upon because no one survived to make note of them, the records were lost or deemed mythic, or simply took place on a world where the inhabitants made no distinction between differing alien perils. More so, it displays the classic arrogance of men who assumed that the boundaries of their knowledge are, in fact, the boundaries of reality. What follows is a list of the most pertinent recent events in the history of the reawakened Necron race and its encounters with the other intelligent cultures of the galaxy:

**666.M41 The Yuctan Incident** – The Yuctan System was a sparsely inhabited Imperial star system close to the Eastern Fringe, and the site of the first naval encounter between the Necrons and the Imperial Navy in 666.M41. A minor Imperial fleet of 6 Escort ships and 1 Light Cruiser were destroyed, with the only survivor being a single _Cobra_-class Destroyer. By the time a full Imperial fleet could be dispatched to the region to deal with what is now called the Yuctan Incident, the Necrons had disappeared, and the system was found devoid of all human life. Although similar and unexplained events had taken place up to this time, the incident at Yuctan was the first fully documented account of a Necron "harvest" of a populated world, as they sought fresh subjects for their research into "apotheosis," the restoration of their consciousness to organic bodies.**_ca_. 744.M41 The Return of the Silent King** - The long-lost final Silent King of the Necron Triarch, Szarekh, enters the bounds of the Milky Way Galaxy once more. Having encountered the Tyranids in the intergalactic void, he recognizes the threat they pose to the Necrons' apotheosis - if the Tyranids devour all organic life in the galaxy, the Necrons will never find living bodies to house their consciousnesses once more. Thus does the Silent King break his self-imposed exile with the goal of marshalling his people against this new threat. However, the Silent King has not anticipated the torpor in which the majority of the Necrons still lie. Many Tomb Worlds have been destroyed over the aeons, others still slumber and most of those that have awoken are still disoriented or somehow damaged. The Silent King is therefore forced to re-evaluate his plans. Working with the surviving Triarch Praetorians, he begins a pilgrimage across the galaxy, stirring those Tomb Worlds yet to revive, and speeding the recovery of those Tomb Worlds already awake. It is the Silent King's wish that the younger races' flawed attempts to destroy the Tyranids do not simply feed the invading Hive Fleets beyond the point where even a united Necron people have any hope of victory.**781.M41 Storm Clouds Gather** - After long years of preparation, Imotekh the Stormlord assumes control of the Crownworld of Mandragora as the Phaeron of the Sautekh Dynasty and begins his conquest of the galaxy.**793.M41 Raid on Solemnace** - Following the onset of Hive Fleet Behemoth's assault on the galaxy and its defeat at the Battle of Macragge, the xenobiologists and Inquisitors of the Imperium are left with many questions that require answers. One such question brings Inquisitor Helynna Valeria to the ghost world of Solemnace, seeking an explanation for why that world had gone untouched when all other planets in the Hive Fleet's path now lie destroyed and consumed. Nothing could have prepared Valeria for what she finds in the silent darkness beneath Solemnace's pitted and barren surface: endless catacombs filled with highly advancedxenos technology, long-lost artefacts from the Imperium's history and gallery after gallery of intricate life-size holographic sculptures laid out in silent tableau to commemorate historic scenes. Valeria's party is briefly awestruck by what they discover, but then the entire Tomb World comes to angry life. Wave after wave ofCanoptek Scarabs and Necron Warriors descend from all sides and the still air is filled with the whine of discharging Gauss Weapons. Seeking to regain the initiative for her beset Acolytes and followers, Valeria leads a charge against the shadowy figure orchestrating the carnage. Sighting carefully, Valeria unleashes a pulse from her Graviton Beamer that reduces the Necron Lord to mangled and fused scrap. Yet moments later, an identical figure emerges from the darkness, hale and undamaged. This time Valeria plunges the _Dagger of Midnight_ 's blade into her adversary's heart, yet even as her opponent's sparking frame sinks to the ground, another identical Necron Lord strides forwards, trampling the now-faceless ruin at her feet. With that, Valeria orders a retreat back to her team's waiting shuttles. Only a handful of the Acolytes survive to reach their destination, and they do so empty-handed. Much to Valeria's disappointment, the Tomb World of Solemnace keeps all of its glorious secrets. Sometime after the conflict, Valeria received a personal hyperscroll message from Trazyn himself, thanking her for sending five regiments of Catachan Jungle Fighters to add to his galleries. Accompanying the message as a return gift was a Hyperstone Maze, one of a series of Tesseract Labyrinths constructed at the height of the Charnovokh Dynasty. It is unknown what became of this gift thereafter.**798.M41 The Siege of Somonor** - Imotekh the Stormlord and the forces of the Sautekh Dynasty repel a war host of Eldar from Craftworld Alaitoc commanded by Farseer Eldorath Starbane from the minor Tomb World of Somonor during the campaign later known as the Siege of Somonor. Following the campaign, Somonor agrees to join the Sautekh Dynasty's growing empire. Starbane is the only survivor of the assault, and he is sent back to Alaitoc but with one hand amputated by Imotekh as a reminder of his defeat. The Eldar of Alaitoc prepare to launch a major assault on the Sautekh Dynasty.**799.M41 The Unexpected End of WAAAGH! 'Eadcrumpa** - Big Mek 'Eadcrumpa leads his Ork WAAAGH!to the newly awakened Tomb World of Suranas. After initial skirmishes prove his still lethargic Necrons to be no match for the Orks, Necron Lord Nepthk strikes a pact with 'Eadcrumpa. In exchange for several dozen functioning Doomsday Cannons, 'Eadcrumpa agrees to leave Suranas and seek plunder elsewhere (whilst secretly resolving to return to Suranas at a later date). Three solar months later, when the WAAAGH! descends on the Imperial Agri-world of Eden Prime, 'Eadcrumpa is unable to resist his urge to investigate the Doomsday Cannons' systems. One breached containment core later and 'Eadcrumpa, his WAAAGH! and the planet of Eden Prime are erased from existence.**805.M41 The Ruin of Morrigar** - A battle between hive gangs on the Imperial Hive World of Morrigar inadvertently awakens the Necron Tomb hidden there. All contact with Morrigar by the Imperium is lost shortly thereafter. When the Imperial Guard's 207th Cadian Shock Troops regiment makes planetfall six solar months later, there is no trace of any inhabitants, human or otherwise. Before the Imperial Guardsmen can leave Morrigar, the nomadic Necron warlord, Anrakyr the Traveller, arrives. Assuming the humans are responsible for the apparent destruction of the Tomb World, he launches an attack that leaves his own forces decimated and the Cadian 207th utterly eliminated.**813.M41 Escape from Cano'var** - At Nemesor Zahndrekh's instruction, the Necron armies of the Tomb World of Gidrim invade the Tau world of Cano'var, routing the planetary defenders after two standard weeks of campaigning. The Necron victory is short-lived however. A demi-company of White Scars Space Marines, led by Kor'sarro Khan, arrive on Cano'var, pursuing a now-obsolete punitive mission against the previous Tau inhabitants. As overwhelming volley of Gauss fire destroys the White Scars' Thunderhawks moments after they land, leaving Khan and his Battle-Brothers to fight a bold, but doomed, series of hit-and-run battles. Almost all of the White Scars are slain on Uzme Plateau, but Zahndrekh commands that Kor'sarro Khan be spared and imprisoned. So does Khan begin a peculiar period of captivity beneath the surface of Cano'var. Zahndrekh treats him with honour, through few of the other Necron Lords even acknowledge his presence. At a bizarre feast, where food is placed before Zahndrekh and his court but goes uneaten, Khan learns he us but one of a dozen prisoners. With the desire for freedom outweighing any ranklement or rivalry, Khan and the other captives conspire to escape. The Necrons are slow to react and so the breakout goes well at first. Only when Vargard Obyron takes command do things go badly for the escapees. Several of the fugitives are slain by Obyron's Warscythe, leaving only Kor'sarro and an Eldar Ranger by the name of Illic Nightspear to fight on, and the latter swiftly receives a blow that sends him sprawling from the fight. Thus does the battle devolve into a duel atop bleeding bodies and broken machines. Khan's sword is quicker and guided by a desperate fury, but Obyron's undying machine body repairs any damage within only moments. Little by little, Khan tires, and the sweeping Warscythe comes closer to connecting with each swing. Finally, one of the Vargard's blows is too swift for Khan to evade - the Warscythe slices through his armour and deep into his flesh. Before Obyron can finish his foe, there is an intervention from an unexpected source. Unknown to either combatants, Zahndrekh has been watching the fight from afar and, impressed by Khan's skill and bravery, orders Obyron to stand aside and let him leave. Dragging the crippled Nightspear behind, Khan finally escapes to surface, finds a still-functioning Tau spacecraft and leaves Cano'var far behind. Khan and Nightspear part ways shortly after, the Eldar to his Craftworld and the White Scar to Chogoris. Shortly after Khan's return to his Chapter planet, Nemesor Zahndrekh and Vargard Obyron are added to the _Scrolls of Venegance_, their names to be put forward as possible quarry for the next Great Hunt of the White Scars Chapter.**815.M41 The Disappearance of Explorator Fleet 913** - Explorator Fleet 913 strays into territory controlled by the Tomb World of Gheden and is destroyed by the fleet of Nemesor Azderon. When the void battle is over, wreckage is set adrift in the projected territory of the Eldar's Alaitoc Craftworld. By the time three companies ofUltramarines come in search of the Adeptus Mechanicus' overdue Explorator Fleet, Azderon has long withdrawn, but the presence of Alaitoc's pathfinder vessels draw the Space Marines into a conflict with the Eldar, who they blame for the destruction of the Imperial vessels.**824.M41 The Return of Thaszar the Invincible** - The shadow-shrouded Imperial world of Athonos is wracked by severe earth tremors. The cause remains a mystery until a colossal Tomb Ship captained by the Necron pirate king, Thaszar the Invincible, emerges from beneath the ground, shedding soil, rock and fragments of hab-block from its hull as it rises after sixty million standard years. The world's defences are, understandably, in disarray. Fortunately for the inhabitants, Thaszar has yet to realise that humans are an intelligent form of life, and pays no more attention to the panicked defenders than h would to a nest of insects, The Athonosian planetary capital lies in ruins, but the rest of the planet survives relatively unscathed as the Tomb Ship heads into the stars, towards the Tomb World of Zapennec, the Crownworld of the Sarnekh Dynasty that he will soon rule as Phaeron, pausing only to obliterate a holo-stealthed Eldar listening post hidden in near-orbit for millennia.**829.M41 The Enslavement of Aryand** - Necron Overlord Vitokh masterminds the invasion of the Imperial Hive World Aryand. After a long and bloody siege, Aryand's Planetary Governor accepts Vitokh's terms and Aryand becomes a slave world in service to the Necron Altymhor Dynasty.**831.M41 The Dissolution of Burr **- After a long archaeological expedition on the mysterious planet of Phall, famed Explorator Benedict Draconis returns to the binary worlds of Burr. The Imperial Planetary Governorholds a banquet in Draconis' honour, which proves to be a fatal mistake when a swarm of Mindshackle Scarabs burst bloodily from the Explorator's brain to feast on the governor and his guests. From there, the Mindshackle Scarabs multiply and swiftly infest Burr's military echelons. With his trap sprung and much of the bonary worlds' defences thus under his control, the Necron Overlord Janzikh of Phall launches an invasion of Burr. Burr Major is the first planet to fall, thanks to recklessness on the part of its remaining human defenders, but soon both worlds are firmly under Necron control. The dissolution furnaces roar day and night, and whenCaptain D'Estev and the Fire Lords Chapter's 5th Company finally arrived, all they can do is destroy Janzikh in retaliation for his deeds.**857.M41 The Lazar Blockade** - Seeking vengeance for the destruction wrought upon their 4th Company, theSilver Skulls blockade the Lazar System and attempt to purge the Necrons from its planets. Though the main Tomb World is overwhelmed and obliterated, the Silver Skulls are quick to regret their hasty assault, as secondary Necron bases throughout the system whir into life. Unable to admit defeat, the Silver Skulls dig in, and what should have been a simple exercise in reciprocity becomes a far more grueling campaign.**859.M41 The Traveller Has Come** - The nomadic Necron Overlord Anrakyr the Traveller arrives in the embattled Lazar System and immediately joins his forces to those defending against the Silver Skulls' onslaught. Necron victory is finally assured at the Battle of Dreadpeak, when Anrakyr's Pyrrhian Eternals spearhead an assault on the Silver Skulls' downed Battle Barge _Argent Hammer_. Though the Space Marines battle hard against the veterans of Pyrrhia, their efforts are undone when Anrakyr seizes control over the Battle Barge's still-functioning weapon batteries and turns their fury on the Imperial defenders. With their Chapter Master slain and their forces in disarray, the Silver Skulls are forced to withdraw their blockade of Lazar - though they take great care to ensure that word of their defeat does not spread. His duty done, Anrakyr takes ship and heads out into the galaxy once more to aid the Necron cause.**910.M41 The Storm Grows** – Imotekh's campaigns are halted briefly by the Imperium's resolute defence of the Forge World Hypnoth. Imperial Guard and Space Marine reinforcements flood into the battle zone, and though they cannot achieve a lasting victory, they succeed in tying down the Necron assault for several months. Encouraged by the prophecies of the astromancer Orikan the Diviner, Imotekh finally breaks the stalemate by launching a series of attacks on Hypnoth's supply worlds Praedis-Zeta and Nyx. The first two raids perform entirely as expected, with the worlds laid to waste and their vital supplies destroyed or claimed by the Sautekh forces. However, an unforseen Tyranid infestation on Nyx wreaks havoc amongst the Necron forces and threatens to completely derail Imotekh's entire campaign. Nevertheless, Imotekh rises to the challenge, weaving a strategy that manipulates the Tyranid swarm into venting its fury on the remaining Imperial defenders. With both sides thus distracted, Imotekh is able to extricate his remaining forces.**911.M41 The Fall of Hypnoth** – Sautekh Crypteks succeed in introducing a mechanophage into the defence systems of Forge World Hypnoth, reducing its formidably armed bastions to helpless ferrocrete shells. Despite a valorous defence by the Flesh Tearers and Iron Hands Space Marines, Hypnoth is conquered by the Necrons within days.**912.M41 - 926.M41 The Assault of the Worldengine** - A violent coup on the Tomb World of Borsis sees its introspective Necron Lord replaced by one of a more expansionist bent. Thus are the long dormant engines of the artificial Tomb World of Borsis fired into life once more, signalling the start of a Necron campaign that leaves much of the Imperium of Man's Vidar Sector in ruins. The massive mobile artificial Tomb World ofBorsis, known to the Imperium as the Worldengine, was attacked in 926.M41 by 15 Space Marine task forces plus elements from the Imperial Navy, and even the mightiest weapons the Imperial forces could bring to bear could not harm it. Drop Pods and torpedoes could not penetrate its shields and it was impossible to lock on to with teleport beams. The Imperial task force tried twelve times to overwhelm it through sheer valour and firepower and was rewarded with a string of destroyed and crippled starships and millions of casualties. The Worldengine destroyed a third of an entire Imperial Navy battlefleet before the Chapter Master of the Astral Knights Chapter decided to ram the hideous planetoid with his Battle Barge, the _Tempestus_. It was only when the enormous Space Marine starship collided with the Necron construct's shields that they finally failed, allowing the Imperial forces to approach their target. A force of over 700 Astral Knights deployed from Drop Pods onto the Necron vessel's surface. For over 100 hours the Astral Knights fought against tens of thousands of Necron warriors and destroyed every flux generator, weapon forge and command node they came upon. Only after the Chapter had been reduced in size to the Chapter Master, Arthor Amhrad, and five Battle-Brothers did they succeed in their quest. Amhrad detonated Melta-charges that destroyed a vast Necron tomb complex that housed many of the Worldengine's command arrays which brought down the vessel's impenetrable Void Shields and also silenced the machine's weaponry. This allowed the Imperial Navy's starships to destroy the Worldengine with Cyclonic Torpedoes. After the battle, as the Adeptus Mechanicuspicked over the remains of the destroyed Worldengine, the Ultramarines retrieved the twisted wreckage of the_Tempestus_ and placed it amid the ruins of Safehold, the planet that had been the last victim of the Worldengine. The 2nd and 4th Companies of the Blood Angels had been amongst the Astartes task forces dispatched to the Vidar Sector to assist their fellow Space Marines against the threat posed by the Worldengine. After the sacrifice of the Astral Knights lead to the final destruction of the Worldengine, Captain Donatos Aphael of the 2nd Company proposed that an Imperial shrine be erected upon the world of Safehold in eternal memory of the Astral Knights Chapter. The shrine consists of seven hundred and seventy-two arbalstone statues, one for every Astral Knight Battle-Brother that died stopping the Worldengine, that stands a silent vigil within the dead heart of the _Tempestus_. From that day forth, 2 Blood Angels of the 2nd Company, and Battle-Brothers from nearly a dozen other Chapters, are always assigned to stand guard over the memorial, which is considered a singular honour for the Astartes that fought beside them for the last time.**930.M41 Battle of Schrödinger VII** – In 930.M41, the forces of the infamous Necron Overlord Imotekh the Stormlord, Phaeron of the powerful Sautekh Dynasty, descended upon the frozen plains of the Imperial Ice World of Schrödinger VII. The Necrons drove the local defenders to the shelter of the labyrinthine cryonite mines, but were unable to prevent the planet's Astropathic Choir from dispatching a distress hymnal. A counterattack swiftly arrived in the form of a Black Templars strike force under the command of MarshalHelbrecht. Imotekh was not caught by surprise so easily, and had already shifted his undying Necron armies into a formidable defensive configuration. Helbrecht lead the assault, intended as a crippling alpha strike, but was instead blunted by a series of impeccably-planned Necron ambushes on the Space Marines' Drop Podand Thunderhawk drop zones. As the frozen caverns echoed to the roar of explosions, scores of Black Templars and Necrons alike were hurled into rivers of molten cryonite. Eventually, Imotekh and Helbrecht met in single combat atop the stalactite-heavy span of an ice bridge. In the battle that followed, Helbrecht, driven by zeal and hatred of the xenos, dealt Imotekh a dozen ruinous blows, but each time the Phaeron's livingNecrodermis was able to quickly repair in a matter of seconds. Despite being the better swordsman, Helbrecht failed to land a truly crippling blow on his opponent, and as the duel drew on, the Marshal finally collapsed under the assault of the Necron Overlord, blood flowing from a score of serious wounds. However, instead of finishing off his opponent, Imotekh brought his Warscythe down and merely severed Helbrecht's right hand to remind the Marshal of his "much-deserved defeat". Helbrecht roared in fury and pain as Imotekh pitched him off the ice bridge to the frigid cavern floor far below. The surviving Black Templars quickly rallied to their fallen Marshal's side and made a fighting retreat, leaving Schrödinger VII in the Stormlord's hands. Following this humiliating defeat, Helbrecht swore an Oath of Vengeance against the Necrons in general, and Imotekh in particular, vowing that the next time they met, only one would leave the battlefield alive.**955.M41 Alliance at Devil's Crag** - The Silent King Szarekh reluctantly joins forces with the Space Marinesof the Blood Angels Chapter to defeat a Tyranid splinter fleet. Commander Dante and the 3rd Company of theBlood Angels Chapter battled against the Necron legions of the Silent King amidst the dusty wastes of the world of Gehenna. For three weeks, neither side could seize the upper hand, with Dante's tactical brilliance stretched to its limits in countering the time-space manipulations of the Silent King. The stalemate was broken only when a Tyranid splinter fleet entered orbit, forcing the two armies to break off hostilities and fight the common foe. The impromptu alliance proved to be the Tyranids' undoing. Following the final battle at Devil's Crag, Dante and the Silent King went their separate ways, both forces too battleworn to guarantee victory over the other, and, at least for the Blood Angels, the idea of turning on those they had so recently fought alongside, proved rather distasteful.**970.M41 The Hall of Swords** - The Emperor's Swords Chapter of Space Marines, the second to bear that name, is destroyed when a Tomb World awakens beneath their fortress-monastery on the world of Bellicas. Those forces isolated outside are swiftly overwhelmed, but the fate of those within is far grimmer. Subverting the systems of the fortress-monastery, a conclave of Crypteks shut down the defences and entomb the Space Marines within their own citadel. Seeking sport from their captives, the new rulers of Bellicas take it in turns to lead waves of Necron Warriors through the shadowed galls, each with the aim of accruing more kills than his peers. Though the Space Marines fight with determination and never once surrender to terror, after three weeks the contest goes to the Necron Lord Trakesz for his personal decapitation of Captain Arnoc Voreign.**973.M41 The Rise of Damnos (Damnos Incident)** - By some fateful quirk, the Necron tomb on the Mining World of Damnos wakes swiftly to full function; overwhelming the human settlers and repelling a counterattackby the Ultramarines 2nd Company. The Necrons of Damnos then proceed to awaken their Dolmen Gates and reconquer a crucial spar of the Webway, driving out the Eldar who had reclaimed its paths during the Great Sleep. With their Webway access restored, Necron raiding parties from Damnos reach out across the Ultima Segmentum of the Imperium of Man, leaving carnage in their wake.**985.M41 Fall of the _Inevitable Conqueror_** – Marshal Helbrecht would get a chance at fulfilling his Oath of Vengeance after the events on Schrödinger VII, when his Crusade fleet detected Necron activity around the Sautekh Dynasty's coreworld of Davatas in 985.M41. Moving swiftly to intercept, Helbrecht rejoiced when their quarry was identified as the _Inevitable Conqueror_, Imotekh's _Cairn_-class Tombship and the Sautekh flagship. Moving in with all haste, the Black Templars' Battle Barge _Sigismund_ managed to land crippling broadside blows on the _Inevitable Conqueror_'s propulsive array, stranding it in place. Intending to get his revenge on his opponent personally, Helbrecht ordered an immediate teleport and boarding torpedo assault upon the Necron Tombship. Within minutes, the decks of the _Inevitable Conqueror_ were swarming with vengeful Black Templars Astartes. Alas, Helbrecht would not even get the satisfaction of seeing his opponent: while Imotekh's pride urged him to fight, logic won out, and the Stormlord teleported himself and many of his most valuable assets away from his flagship to his unengaged Escort ships. The Necrons immediately accelerated away from the fighting and made good their escape. Fuming with impotent rage, Helbrecht could only gain a meagre measure of satisfaction from ensuring the total destruction of the _Inevitable Conqueror_ by personally setting his foe's beloved flagship on a collision course with the closest star and blasting to smithereens those other Necron spacecraft too slow to flee. The frustrated Helbrecht reaffirmed his Oath of Vengeance, swearing once again that he would see Imotekh dead once and for all. Those Black Templars with some familiarity with the undying Necrons fear that their Marshal has bitten off more than he can chew. While Helbrecht is certainly capable of besting the Necron Phaeron in single combat, preventing the undying mechanical fiend from teleporting to safety and destroying Imotekh outright may prove to be an impossible feat for a single Chapter of Space Marines, no matter their zeal.**999.M41 The Carnac Campaign** - The Necron Overlord Anrakyr the Traveller arrives on a planet he supposes to be the Tomb World of Carnac, only to find it infested with Eldar Exodites. Realising that the tomb, if it remains, will be buried too deep for him to awaken it before the Exodites can themselves summon aid, Anrakyr entreats the Necron Lords and Overlords of other Tomb Worlds for aid. Reinforcements swiftly arrive from Mandragora, Gidrim and Trakonn, through the most unexpected of all is a contingent from Solemnace, led by Trazyn the Infinite himself. All this takes time, however, and by the time the Night Scythe fleets deploy the invading forces, the armies of the Alaitoc Craftworld stand side-by-side with the Carnac Exodites. Guided by the prophecies of Farseer Eldorath Starbane and the strategies of Illic Nightspear, the Eldar attempt to stall the Necron invasion with a series of hit-and-run attacks. Their aim is to sever the command structure by destroying Anrakyr and his closest allies, but the Pyrrhian Lord manages to subvert the prophesies of the Farseer through the astromantic analyses of Orikan the Diviner. Though Orikan's divinations are by no means as focussed as those of Eldorath Starbane, they are sufficient to tangle the skeins of fate and leave many details of the campaign beyond the Farseer's reach. So it is that Pathfinders arrive at what they thought to be Anrakyr's location, only to find him long gone and squads of Deathmarks waiting in ambush. After several inconclusive battles on Carnac's verdant plains, Anrakyr forces the Eldar to engage in a head-to-head confrontation by marching on the Exodites' World Spirit shrine. As the tireless Necron legions advance upon the walls, Doom Scythes duel with elegant Eldar fighters in the skies above. Deathmarks ply a deadly trade of ambush and counter-ambush with Alaitoc Pathfinders, and all the while Flayed Ones prowl the flanks, pouncing on any Eldar foolish enough to show even a momentary sign of weakness. The two sides are well-matched, with Necron hardiness countered by the Eldar's tactical precision. Victory finally falls to the Necrons when Carnac's tomb unexpectedly begins to awaken, stirred from dormancy by the tumult above. With Necron reinforcements now starting to trickle into the campaign, the Eldar have little choice but to abandon Carnac and its World Spirit to their their ancient enemies. Anraky is grimly jubilant in the campaign's aftermath, and gladly accedes when Trazyn requests the entire World Spirit shrine as spoils of war. For his part, Orikan requests no trophy or payment for his part in the victory, and merely hopes that when the flush of victory fades, no one thinks to question the convenient coincidence of the Carnac tomb's awakening.Notable Necron Dynasti

Even in life, the Necrontyr civilisation was one of strict protocol and process, governed by nobles whose rule was absolute. This rigid hierarchy became more entrenched during the transition from flesh to machine, and th awakening Necron civilisation is far more complex and stratified than the one that once ruled the galaxy. Every Necron belongs to a royal dynasty, one of the great houses of the ancient Necrontyr Empire. Allegiance to a dynasty was once purely a matter of family and tradition, but it is now entrenched through conquest and programming. Every Necron noble s truly individualistic and, whilst they might share a common set of customs and loyalties, they rarely have a unity of purpose beyond that imposed by their superiors. Accordingly, whilst several neighbouring worlds might owe allegiance to the same royal dynasty, the agenas they pursue depends entirely on the whims and goals of each Necron Overlord or Lord, rather than the broader traditions of the dynasty.

Before the coming of the C'tan, there were many hundreds of Necrontyr dynasties. Some wielded vast political and military power while others were vestigial and broken, mere echoes of once great noble houses. Through the Wars of Secession, the rebellion against biotransference, the War in Heaven and the Great Sleep, many thousands of royal dynasties were destroyed. It is impossible to say how many survived, save that they number in the hundreds, or possibly thousands. Those dysnaties listed below can be considered the most powerful of those that remain and are known to the Imperium of Man:

Sautekh Dynasty

In the times before biotransference, the Sautekh Dynasty was ranked as the third most powerful of all the Necrontyr royal dynasties. Through chance or design, many of the Sautekh coreworlds survived the aeons better than those of other dynasties. Now, this Necron dynasty is more powerful than any other in the galaxy, and its nobility is the most aggressive in attempting a new wave of expansion intended to reforge the ancient Necron Empire.

Charnovokh Dynasty

Much of the territory once ruled by the Charnovokh Dynasty lies far to the galactic southeast. Many of its dormant Tomb Worlds were devoured by the Tyranids' Hive Fleet Behemoth, and countless others have been ravaged during the Imperium of Man's counterattacks against the Great Devourer. As a result, the remaining star systems of the Charnovokh Dynasty are many, but small and scattered.

Oroskh Dynasty

The worlds ruled by the Oroskh Dynasty are heavily infected by the dreaded Flayer Virus-the result of a deliberate contamination conducted by Eldar Pathfinders from the Alaitoc Craftworld. Year by standard year, the populations of the Orosokh Tomb Worlds shrink further as ever more Necrons devolve into Flayed Ones.

Atun Dynasty

The Atun Dynasty rules many Tomb Worlds on the northern galactic rim - the original birthplace of the Necrontyr species. Many of the ancient wonders of the galaxy lie under the control of the Phaeron of Atun and his powerful Overlords, and still many more wait to be uncovered from Tomb Worlds not yet awoken.

Nekthyst Dynasty

During the Wars of Secession, the nobles of the Nekthyst Dynasty earned themselves a reputation as turncoats and betrayers, for many of them held to pacts and alliances only so long as it served their interests. Though these events were long ago, the taint of dishonour still hangs heavy over the Nekthyst Dynasty, and few Phaerons of other noble lineages will stoop even to treat with them, let alone trust them.

Ogdobekh Dynasty

The Ogdobekh Dynasty was ever famed for its technical mastery. As a result, its Tomb Worlds were more prepared for the Great Sleep, and more completely outfitted with backup systems and multiple redundancies. The dynasty's relative power is therefore greater than it was in ancient times, for its people have emerged far more reliably from stasis hibernation than most other Necrons.

Oruscar Dynasty

The Necrontyr nobles of the Oruscar Dynasty were ever bitter rivals with those of the Sauthekh Dynasty. Whilst the power of the Sautekh was spread wide throughout the ancient stars, Oruscar's holdings were limited to a handful of hallowed ancestral worlds laden with a multitude of technological wonders. This rivalry is not ended in the current era, merely dormant. Both dynasties are, thus far, pursuing the wider goal of reclaiming the galaxy for the Necron race - but such a state of affairs is unlikely to last forever.

Nihilakh Dynasty

The territories of the Nihilakh Dynasty are parochial in the extreme, venturing little outside their domains. Whilst this isolationism is perhaps a boon to those alien races that dwell near to awakened Nihilakh Tomb Worlds, it also carries significant peril. Undepleted by the grind of military expansion like their counterparts in the more expansionist dynasties, the Necron armies of Nihilakh stand ready to take their vengeance upon any interloper. If attacked, the Nihilakh do not rest until the aggressor has been utterly destroyed.

Necron Dynasty Hierarchy

The highest of the Necron nobles are the Phaerons, the rulers of entire dynasties, including many planetary systems. Beneath these nobles are the Necron Overlords, who rule clusters of Tomb Worlds within their Phaeron's domain. Lower still are the Necron Lords, each charged with the keeping of a dynasty's single core or fringeworld. So deeply are these titles mired in Necron tradition that they are universally constant across all of the dynasties. However, the titles of subordinate nobles and functionaries, which make up advisory councils and specialist convocations, are subject to an almost infinite variety.

Gravs, vymarks and thantars are but a few of the titles given to lower tier Necron nobles; almost identical in terms of rank and responsibility, the only real difference arises from which dynasty the individual hails. Many Necron titles are hereditary, dating to the earliest days of the Necrontyr - some were relatively later inventions, crafted as a means by which nobles of lesser rank could be rewarded for their service. As the sphere of Necrontyr dominion expanded ever further, the scope and application of titles passed far beyond any form of central control. Each royal dynasty created ever more elaborate titles based on its own traditions as a means of self-justification. Like many civilisations, the more grandiose or long-winded the title, the more likely it was merely an attempt to disguise low status.

This tanglework becomes particularly byzantine when a Phaeron from one royal dynasty gains sway over a world from another. The resulting protocol is tedious beyond the endurance of living creatures, but for the Necron nobility it is merely another way of whiling away eternity. To make matters worse, if a Phaeron is deposed or destroyed, his replacement will sometimes insist that all existing ranks be amended to reflect the traditions of his own house. To take such a step, the incumbent must be entirely sure of his own position, as a challenge to tradition is sure to rouse discontent within his own court.

The ranking structures within the Necrontyr armies and fleets have remained constant, no matter how vast and disparate the dynasties have become. For example, every time any Necrons go to war, the title of Nemesor is bestowed upon the overall commander of the battlefield or campaign. This allows armies from across the stars to join forces, even if they have never met, and suffer no decrease in efficiency. This entrenche command structure helped ease the transition of Imotekh the Stormlord from Nemesor to Phaeron of the Sautekh Dynasty.

Every Phaeron and Overlord is served by a Royal Court, which assists in the administration of Tomb Worlds and the execution of military campaigns. A Royal Court consists of a group of Necron Lords, Crypteks, and in the courts of Phaerons, Overlords, who owe fealty to the ruler through oath or family bonds. Through flesh is long since a memory for the Necrons, ties of blood remain as important as they ever were to the Necrontyr. Each Necron Lord will also be served by their own lesser courts. Only nobles of the very lowest ranks do not have courts of their own, yet even these mimic their betters by keeping a circle of untitled advisors from the most acceptably sentient of their vassals. Of course, given the paucity of wit in such advisors, these courts are but shadowed mockeries of the real things. However, in the ongoing battle for status and proper protocol, even a laughable court is considered better than no court at all.

Necron Legions"_What care I that my legions are faceless? Identity matters only to those who have the ability to think: my Immortals and Lychguard, perhaps; my Lords and Crypteks, certainly. For the remainder of my vassals? Well, suffice to say that the concept of glory is wasted on the inglorious._"— Imotekh the Stormlord, Phaeron of the Sautekh Dynasty, Regent of Mandragora

The size of a Royal Court is not only important in terms of political status and prestige; it also determines a noble's military status. The larger the Royal Court, the greater his seniority and the more troops under his command. Even a noble who lacks for a Royal Court commands a legion of Necron Warriors, a few phalanxes of Immortals andDeathmarks, as well as a phalanx of Lychguard. Added to this are forces not aligned to any particular dynasty.Triarch Praetorians, the surviving agents of the vanished Triarch, fight alongside any Nemesor whom they judge to have the best interests of the dynasties at heart. Nihilistic Necron Destroyers can be lured to a battle with promises of carnage and slaughter, whilst Crypteks can be retained through acts of patronage. Few nobles, no matter how desperate their plight, deliberately seek out the aid of the devolved Flayed Ones, although as these charnel creatures inevitably turn up to Necron battles of their own accord, this reluctance is of little account.

The more senior a noble's poistion in the hierarchy, the greater the number and quality of the troops he has authority over. Furthermore, a ranking noble also has indirect command over all the forces controlled by the members of his Royal Court, who, in turn, have authority over the forces controlled by their subordinates, and so on. As even the smallest of Tomb Worlds has at least two-score nobles of lesser rank, an Overlord can commonly draw upon at least a hundred legions of Necron Warriors, should he have need.

Dynastic Glyphs

All Necrons, noble and common-born alike, are bound together by the symbol of the ancient Necrontyr Empire, the Ankh of the Triarch (pictured above). Each of the royal dynasties also has its own glyph, the designs of which have remained unchanged over the aeons. Necron nobles bear the dynasty's mark, normally upon a death mask, cloak or sometimes as a stylised detail on personal weaponry or tokens of office. The most arrogant of nobles bear a glyph upon their breastplate in place of the Ankh of the Triarch, though to do so is to defy tradition and protocol.

Only nobles of the highest rank are permitted to bear their dynasty's glyph in its fullest form. Those of lesser rank bear only elements of the glyph, symbolising their position relative to a royal dynasty's heart of power. A handful of nobles do not bear a glyph at all - some hail from royal dynasties destroyed during the War in Heaven, while others were stripped of rank and status for some long ago transgression. In either event, such a noble is considered untrustworthy at best, with treachery either in his past or in his future.

Dynastic glyphs are unique to Necron nobles. The common soldiery, such as Necron Warriors and Immortals, are largely considered to be interchangeable chattel by their noble masters. As such, they are thought unworthy of direct association with the proud lineage of a particular dynasty - although the colours of their necrodermis death masks and armour sometimes echo ancient Necrontyr heraldry and thus indirectly reflect their allegiance. In contrast, Necron war engines, such as Monoliths and Doomsday Arks, are often marked with dynastic glyphs - they are considered to be the personal weaponry of a particular noble and therefore warrant a higher status than even the Necron Warriors that crew them.

Notable Necron Tomb Worlds"_Order. Unity. Obedience. We taught the galaxy these things long ago, and we will do so again._"—Imotekh the Stormlord, Phaeron of the Sautekh Dynasty, Regent of Mandragora

For many of the galaxy's myriad intelligent species, the re-emergent Necrons are but one terror amongst many in the darkness between the stars. Even within the Imperium of Man, the Necrons are only dimly understood, with just a handful of individuals aware of the true scale of the threat they represent to Mankind's dominion over the galaxy.

Just as Necron society is rigidly hierarchical, so too are its Tomb Worlds. The most important are the crownworlds, oldest and proudest of all the Necron-held planets and the sites from which their dynasties and planetary clusters are governed. Crownworlds were once hubs of galactic power in the ancient days of Necron might, buttressed by tithe and tribute sent from elsewhere within the territory of their ruling dynasties. With access to such great resource-wealth, crownworlds were able to construct the most reliable stasis-crypts for their inhabitants. As a result, crownworld inhabitants that have weathered the slumbering millennia, without falling afoul of external circumstances, have done so in excellent condition - though this only dampens the tragedy for the Necron race when a crownworld is lost to galactic calamity.

Next in importance for any Necron dynasty are coreworlds, planets which together form the heart of dynasty's interstellar territory. The rulers of coreworlds would inevitably be the close kin to the regent of their dynasty's crownworld, ensuring a bond of dynastic loyalty endured between the often diverse planets. Though neither so majectic nor so mighty as crownworlds, the coreworlds were great powers to be reckoned with in their heyday and, barring disaster, are so again in the late 41st Millennium.

Finally, Necron fringeworlds are planets of tertiary importance to their ruling dynasty, not viewed as being of high enough status to be numbered amongst a dynasty's coreworlds. Fringeworlds were often poor or distant colonies of a dynasty, able to contribute to the wider realm only in terms of manual labour or as a location for penal institutions. Some fringeworlds will once have counted amongst the coreworlds of a different dynasty, but have since been conquered or otherwise subsumed into the dominion of their current ruler, thus descending in status.

There is no such thing as a "typical" Necron Tomb World. Each answers only to the will of its noble ruler, and thus his proclivities define everything from its grand campaigns to trivialities such as architectural styles and forms of address between noble ranks. Nevertheless, there is one common cause that binds all Tomb Worlds: the rebuilding of the Necron dynasties of old, and the return of the Necrons to their rightful place of supremacy over the whole of the ignorant galaxy. The Tomb Worlds listed below represent no more than a handful of the many millions spread throughout the galaxy. Each revived world has its own idiosyncracies, and the number is ever growing. Who can say how many far-flung outposts of Mankind have their foundations set upon a planet long ago claimed by an immeasurably older civilisation, its inhabitants blissfully unaware of the slumbering horror at their planet's core. In these days of the Necrons' awakening, no world in the galaxy can rest easy...

Mandragora the Golden, Crownworld of the Sautekh Dynasty

Mandragora was always an important world, a hub for the Necron armies that did battle on the eastern rim of the galaxy. When the War in Heaven ended, Mandragora's stasis-crypts were filled to capacity with some of the finest warriors that the Necron dynasties could command. Mandragora's defences were second to none, as befitted a world of its status, and it survived the Great Sleep intact and safe from the attentions of plunderers. So did Mandragora emerge from hibernation not only hale and whole, but with vast Necron legions at its command - a situation its new Phaeron, Imotekh the Stormlord, was quick to exploit. Ordering Mandragora's Dolmen Gatesreactivated, he sent forces to seize the many coreworlds from the Ork hordes of Warboss Snagratoof. With the Orks driven off or destroyed, the reclaimed Tomb Worlds were then awoken, swelling Imotekh's forces further. Since then, the armies of Mandragora have proved an ever-present threat on the Imperium's eastern borders, and one that continues to grow.

Gheden, Planet of Shadow, Crownworld of the Nihilakh Dynasty

Due to a devastating fault in a dimensional stabiliser array, the crownworld of Gheden is half-phased into a pocket dimension for all but a few standard hours of its stellar orbit. What was first thought of as a catastrophe has since proved to be a great boon to the Necrons of Gheden, as their world is now almost entirely impervious to assault. Deep beneath Gheden's surface lies the Oracle Chamber, where the bulbous head of an ancient alien prophet gifted with psychic precognition is kept alive through a combination of stasis field technology and temporal stabilisers. The prophet's thoughts are projected as multifaceted holographic images which, in theory, show events yet to unfurl. That said, the creature continually rails against his ghoulish imprisonment and obfuscates the images so that they mislead his captors as often as they are truthful.

Thanatos and the Celestial Orrery

The Tomb World of Thanatos is a hollow planet, and hidden at its heart is one of the galaxy's greatest treasures - the Celestial Orrery. Crafted by artisans of the Oruscar Dynasty long before the onset of the War in Heaven, this web of hologram and living metal is beyond price for its artistic value alone. Yet the Celestial Orrery is far more than mere decorative finery. The tiny pinpricks of glowing light suspended within the impossibly intricate holographic matrix record the positions of every star in the galaxy. Snuff out one of these lights and its physical counterpart in the real galaxy will go supernova long millennia before its destined time, bringing fiery oblivion to all nearby worlds through the use of technology far beyond the understanding of Mankind. Such an act cannot be performed without consideration, however, as each star destroyed in this fashion upsets the fundamental forces of the galaxy, setting off a catastrophic chain reaction of events. Only with further manipulation of the Celestial Orrery can these forces be returned to their proper balance, and this invariably takes many thousands of standard years of constant and precise micromanagement. With so much power at their fingertips, it is well that the Royal Court of Thanatos is not given to maniacal displays. Rather, they see themseves as the gardeners of Creation and dispassionately use the Orrery in a precise and sparing manner, pruning the galaxy only out of need to prevent it from becoming wild and overgrown. Alas, this restraint is not something universally respected. Unending war rages across Thanatos' barren continents and in the skies above, as the armies and fleets of the Oruscar Dynasty seek to prevent the Celestial Orrery from falling into the incautious hands of aliens and other Necron dynasties alike.

Bone Kingdom of Drazak

In the extreme northeast of the galaxy lies the region known as the Ghoul Stars. here, on worlds lit by cold rays of dying suns, tread creatures out of primal nightmares: Cythor Fiends, Togoran Bloodreeks and other creatures so alien as to seem born out of the supernatural. Yet even here, one horror outpaces all others - the Bone Kingdom of Drazak. Drazak is a world that serves as a haunt for the Flayed Ones, those cursed Necrons blighted by a terrible disease that has given them an irrational hunger for organic flesh. They stalk Drazak's desolate streets, fighting over gobbets of rotting meat and shards of bone, desperate to sate the clamour of their deluded senses. Only one amongst Drazak's entire population of Necrons is proof from the Flayer Virus' pervading madness - Valgul, the Fallen Lord. Fron his throne of splintered bone and tanned skin, Valgul rules over this charnel kingdom, his one good eye ever fixed upon retaining what small measure of order he can. Seemingly, Valgul remains untouched by the Flayer Virus that has consumed his people, but what truly sane creature would willingly live mongst gibbering Flayed Ones? Perhaps he remains from a sense of duty, or maybe his personal madness merely takes another, more subtle, form. Valgul's rule is not founded on reason - the devolved nature of his subjects makes such notions laughable - but is grounded in his ability to provide the gory bounty in which his subjects delight. Every few solar months, when no more meat remains - whether because it has been torn into fragments too tiny to scrabble over or simply due to inexorable rot - Valgul announces a new Time of Bounty, and despatches the fleets of Drazak to raid nearby worlds. These reavers of Drazak seek not riches nor conventional plunder - only red harvests of gore and cooling blood.

Trantis, the Raider's Moon

Though nominally a Tomb World, Trantis is, in truth, but a Necron fringeworld, and the satellite of the much larger and resource-rich Imperial world of Mandal. Since revival, the Necrons of Trantis have been a terror on Mandal's human farming and mining communities. Striking always in the hours of darkness, low-flying squadrons of Night Scythes flit over the landscape, deploying small forces of Necron raiders to plunder and pillage. It is not uncommon for entire human settlements to be overwhelmed and harvested within a single night with only a large and barren crater to show where people once lived and worked. Mandal's communes are so far apart that whole solar days can pass before a disappearance is noted, and certainly too distant for help to be dispatched once a raid begins. The inhabitants of Mandal have thus learnt to dread the onset of dusk. As darkness descends, a curfew begins, blast doors are sealed and sentries set. Yet every few nights another human settlement vanishes without warning and without trace. Ironically, Trantis was only ever intended as a Necron way station for resources and raw materials. It lacks the ability to use more than a fraction of the plunder taken from the planet below and was to ship the excess to other nearby coreworlds. Since the Great Sleep, however, Trantis' portion of the Webway has become sundered from all others, effectively isolating it from those Necron worlds it used to supply. Accordingly, Trantis is slowly drowning in plundered resources for which it has little use. Yet still the raids on Mandal continue...

Zapennec, the Reaveworld

In the final hours of the War in Heaven, one of its greatest battles occurred above Zapennec, the crownworld of the Sarnekh Dynasty. There, Zapennec's royal fleet fought valiantly to repel an Eldar assault of almost incalculable size. The battle was a brief one, but no less deadly for all that. Whilst the surviving Eldar retreated, leaving the planet itself unharmed, its orbit was, from that moment, clogged with the spiralling and blackened wreckage of the once-proud fleets. So soon after the battle did the Great Sleep descend, that the Necrons of Zapennec had no time to clear their skies. Thus did they enter hibernation with their planet shielded by a spinning shroud of Wraithbone and living metalnecrodermis. So would things remain until the late 41st Millennium and the return of the Sarnekh Dynasty's most notorious outcast, the self-styled pirate king Thaszar the Invincible. Awakening on Athonos, the Tomb World to which he had been exiled, and driven by some urge he could not identify, Thaszar returned to Zapennec. Finding its people deep in hibernation, he inveigled his way into the Tomb World's master program. In short order he convinced the master program that he, Thazar the Invincible, was no dishonoured noble returned from exile, but in fact the rightful Phaeron of the Sarnekh Dynasty! For good measure, he then ordered that this updated status be engrammatically encoded into the minds of the Tomb World's slumbering Necrons. So did the outcast of Zapennec become its ruler, and those who had banished him become his servants. Under Thaszar's command, the ancient and noble crownworld of the Sarnekh Dynasty has been made over into the Reaveworld. In the shroud of orbital wreckage surrounding the planet, Thaszar has access to all the raw materials he will ever need to build a Necron pirate fleet the scale of which has not been seen for 60 million standard years; in the reprogrammed Necrons of Zapennec, he has crews and captains of unfailing loyalty. Thaszar's vessels have already begun to prowl both theWebway and realspace, and the galaxy will surely come to rue the day he awakened.

Empire of the Severed

When electromagnetic radiation storms ravaged the Tomb World of Sarkon, they destroyed forever the memory engrams of every Necron interred within its stasis-tombs. With its charges thus rendered mindless, the complex's master program (Artificial Intelligence) took charge of their living metal bodies. Little realising that its own logic systems had also been damaged by the radiation storms, the master program observed the quiet order it had brought to Sarkon and resolved to bring this same order to other worlds far and wide. Searching its databases, the master program sent its mindless Necron legions of the Severed to invade Takarak, a slumbering Tomb World located nearby. Takarak's defences were swiftly overwhelmed, and the "Sarkoni Emperor" (for this was how the Sarkoni master program now thought of itself as its madness deepened) erased the minds of Takarak's slumbering inhabitants and claimed their bodies for itself. As of 967.M41, another three Tomb Worlds have been overcome in this same manner, and the Sarkoni Emperor has begun to extend its will across other, non-Necron worlds, usingMindshackle Scarabs to bring any unruly organic creatures under its direct control just like its Severed servants.

Moebius, the Twisted Catacomb, Crownworld of the Nekthyst Dynasty

The Necron nobles of the Nekthyst Dynasty ever had a talent for decpetion, and their crownworld stands as an enduring testament to that devious mindset. The extradimensional hyperspace corridors connecting Moebius' countless crypts take the form of an ever-shifting maze, ensuring that no journey through the catacombs is ever the same twice - as at least one Deathwatch Kill-team has found out to its cost.

Stasis Docks of Seidon

In ancient times, Seidon lay at the heart of Necrontyr expansion. It was from this coreworld's stardocks 60 million standard years ago that the first Necrontyr antimatter-fueled torch-ships set out into the stars, carrying colonists beyond the boundaries of Necrontyr space. Throughout the War in Heaven, the wharves of Seidon continued to ply their trade, but instead sent expeditionary forces in search of fresh worlds to conquer. Every thirty-three solar weeks, another vast stasis-ship would launch from the dockyards of Seidon, carrying a legion of Immortals to some distant planet. When the Great Sleep ended and Seidon woke once again to full function, its rulers decided that they could best serve their final orders by continuing on their mission of conquest. Alas, unbeknownst to the Tomb World's Overlord, Seidon's master program suffered corruption during the great Sleep and many records were destroyed or inexplicably altered. No longer are the great ships set forth on courses that intersect with planetary systems. Instead, each vessel is launched on a random heading, as likely to plunge it into the blazing heart of a star or into the tendriled maw of a Tyranid Hive Fleet as it is to result in safe planetfall. Yet as Seidon's Necron nobility have no need to query the master program, the fault continues to go unnoticed. Thus, for every thirty-three solar weeks that pass, another legion of Immortals depart on their perilous journey into the unknown...

Trakonn of Ten Thousand Spires, Crownworld of the Dyvanakh Dynasty

The Necrons of Trakonn originally awoke in the early 41st Millennium, but were not to shake off their hibernation-induced disorientation for nearly five hundred standard years. This proved sufficient time for their Tomb World to draw the attention of the Tech-priests of a neighbouring Forge World of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and the internal battle to regain consciousness swiftly overlapped with a series of wars against the forces of the Imperium of Man. Now the siege has finally ended, and Trakonn's armies have finally cast the upstart humans from their planet and begun the search for the other Tomb Worlds of their dynasty. Alas, they have been unable to make contact with even a single one, and must now assume that the records of old no longer match the reality of the present-day galaxy. n this they are, at best, only tangentially correct. The missing Dyvanakh Tomb Worlds were actually engulfed and destroyed by a Warp Storm thousands of standard years before Trakonn ever emerged from the Great Sleep. Ignorant of this fact, the nobles of Trakonn continue their hopeless search to this day.

Blood Vats of Zantragora

The Necron nobles of the Tomb World of Zantragora have but one overriding goal. Their aim is apotheosis, the undoing of biotransference's curse of soullessness by transferring their consciousnesses into the organic bodies of other sentient beings. Their belief that such a thing is possible is rooted both in the final command of the Silent King, and in prophecies made at the time of the Great Sleep. These, while predicting that apotheosis would come to pass, lacked much in the way of detail, and it has ever been unclear whether the Necrons need to take over other organic bodies, or clone new ones drawn from the original Necrontyr genetic material for their eternal minds to reinhabit. To this end, the legions and fleets of Zantragora scour the galaxy for fresh subjects, following strict search patterns lest they somehow miss a world whose inhabitants hold the key to their transformation. Hundreds of thousands of such "samples," both living and dead, are taken from every inhabited planet in the search pattern. Sealed in stasis-sleep, these individuals are conveyed back to Zantragora to feed the never-ending series of autopsies, gene-splicing, tissue mutation and molecular deconstruction that typifies the Necron quest for apotheosis. Progress has proved excruciatingly slow, and every step is marked in the blood of the "lesser" species.

Necron Combat Doctrine

Hibernating deep within the hearts of their Tomb Worlds, the Necrons have been dormant for more than 60 million Terran years. Scattered Necron raiding parties heralded the undying race's awakening to full activity once more in the late 41st Millennium, but now as their thirsty Star Gods, the C'tan, rise to a hungry wakefulness for life energy, the dreaded Necrontyr have returned to claim the galaxy for their own.

Every Necron Tomb World has been constructed to accord to a complex template that was devised by the Necrontyr at the height of their civilisation. Utilising physical principles and technology that have not been rediscovered by any other intelligent species since they began their long sleep, the Necrons created immense subterranean warehouses to store their race for the millions of years they would spend inactive. Using their mastery of advanced interdimensional geometry, the Necrons built massive chambers that could house tens of thousands of their kind in a space seemingly larger on the inside than without. Deep beneath these pyramidal structures, the Necrons stored their horrific weaponry and erected powerful temporal stabilisers that would shield these warriors and their savage weapons from the ravages of time much like a stasis field.

Each Tomb World, once it has been reactivated, awakens its sleepers in a rigid and predictable algorithmic sequence that is as inevitable as the dying of the stars. First, the Tomb World releases swarms of robotic Canoptek Scarab and Canoptek Spyder constructs to attend to the rudimentary needs of the stasis tombs. Soon after theNecron Warriors are reawakened and begin reconnaissance patrols of the region of the world surrounding their tombs. Using the information gained by these Necron Warriors' scouting missions, the Tomb World's automated systems assess the current circumstances that dominate its environment. According to ancient, pre-determined algorithms, the stasis tombs then bring on-line other Necron machineries and weapons as the circumstances warrant. The Necron Lord or Lords present on the Tomb World are encoded with this information and the data necessary to form artificial personalities so that when they awaken they can embody the singular purpose of the Tomb World and make independent decisions.

A large population centre of one of the galaxy's younger races, usually Mankind, may have been settled unwittingly on what is actually a Necron Tomb World. When this situation is encountered, the Tomb World's encoded programming reacts extremely aggressively to defend its hibernating charges. These Tomb Worlds are the ones that have activated the most rapidly during the current awakening of the Necrons and are now hives of activity for the undying race. As their automated systems delve ever deeper into their existing archives of data and storehouses of units and weapons, the Tomb Worlds whose areas of influence have been "invaded" by the younger races are gearing up to begin what will eventually become a full-scale retaliatory action against the Imperium of Man and any other organised force that stands in the Necrons' way. This is a programmed behaviour pattern that Imperial savants have dubbed "the Harvest." When it comes to pass, it will be a genocidal-level event on a par with the War in Heaven against the Old Ones millions of years ago.

Nodal Command

Necron Tomb Worlds appear to have no permanent organisation or command structure, nor is the interaction of the various forces altogether clear to the savants of the Imperium. The Necrons' form of warfare could best be described as a continuous process of causality, as each battle, campaign and Harvest produces preordained responses from the controlling program of the Tomb World. This evolving structure is made possible by a system similar to that used in the most complex assemblies of the Adeptus Mechanicus, which is known as Nodal Command. Nodal Command organisation allocates a strict hierarchy to all of the elements within it. This system grants greater operational and decision-making capacity to certain "nodes" whilst slaving the rest of the system to these nodes' autonomous command decisions. Necron Lords form the nodes of the command structure, allowing each Lord an allocated hierarchical value at any given time. Though the Adeptus Mechanicus can only guess at how this Nodal Command system truly operates, they have determined that there are at least four levels of hierarchy within the Nodal Command, which the Tech-priests have designated Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum levels, in ascending order of command priority. The Nodal Command system is also a communications structure and forms the basis for how intelligence information is gathered and orders issued to the necessary Necron units. The system is often likened to the ancient flow charts once used to design Cogitator algorithms during the Dark Age of Technology.

The decisions taken by a higher-level Necron Lord (such as a Gold-level), give a single, quick response. All relevant data and orders are then automatically disseminated to any subservient Lords - the Silver-and Bronze-level Lords slaved to the Gold-level commander. In situations where speed is less important than processing all of the relevant information, decision-making defers across several Bronze or Silver-level Lords, and can even devolve down to the individual Necron Warriors at specific times during combat. This system allows for a great deal of coordination when required, but also still leaves room for independent action by distant combat groups should the need arise. A Platinum-level Necron Lord, also known as a Necron Overlord, has not yet been encountered by Imperial forces. Savant speculation indicates that this level of Necron Lord would command massive Necron fleets intended to Harvest entire swathes of the galaxy. Such a Necron force might prove unstoppable.

Escalation

After multiple encounters with the Necrons, it has become obvious to Imperial savants that as a conflict worsens, a Tomb World will temporarily withdraw its existing forces from combat before releasing a new, more potent army led by an extended Nodal Command. Essentially, the more a foe escalates its response to Necron forces, the more devastating will become the Necron offensive. In most situations, only a few Necron Warriors and specialist support units like Destroyers or Wraiths are deployed to defeat an emerging threat. But as resistance grows, so does the strength of the forces that will be released by the Tomb World's autonomic systems to the Nodal Command structure for use by the commanding Necron Lord or Lords.

Combat escalation with the Necrons of a specific Tomb World will grow in this exponential fashion until the forces that are capable of being deployed by the Necrons represent a level of destructive power that can surpass that of any other enemy Mankind has ever faced, including the Tyranids and the Forces of Chaos. Seemingly endless ranks of Necron Warriors will be transported into combat by armadas of newly-awakened Monoliths, while Immortalsand Destroyers by the hundreds will be released in relentless waves against enemy troops. Scores of horrific Flayed Ones and Wraiths will terrorise civilian populations and destroy morale behind the front lines. It is believed by many Imperial savants that some Tomb Worlds still maintain a wide variety of units more powerful and destructive than the massed phalanxes of Necron Warriors and Monoliths that have been encountered by the defenders of the Imperium to date. All that is required for these unseen units to be committed to the fight is for the combat to escalate to a level that has not yet been attained. The mind reels from imagining what kinds of horrific machines the Necrons may yet unleash upon an unsuspecting galaxy when this unknown line is finally crossed in the not-too-distant future. TheDead Worlds that have been found close to many present Tomb Worlds scoured of all life are perhaps testaments to the true fate of those who oppose the undying Necrons.

Tomb World Nodal Command Stages**Primary Awakeners** - The first elements activated by a Tomb World's autonomic systems once the outside environment has been judged to be receptive to the hibernating Necrons' awakening are the Tomb Spyders. These robotic custodians begin the initial tasks of opening and performing basic maintenance to the Necron stasis tombs. Embued with the powers of Necron resurrection, the Tomb Spyders activate the Tomb World's initial reconnaissance forces, known as Raiders. Meanwhile, the second group of Primary Awakeners, the smaller robotic constructs called Scarabs, secure the interior of the stasis tombs. In massive swarms numbering in the thousands, Scarabs seek out intruders and carry out any remaining essential maintenance on the stasis tombs' defence systems.**Raider Force** - Made up of a small number of Necron Warriors and Scarabs, the Raider forces emerge into the outside environment with complete autonomy to carry out their mission as they see fit within the limits of their programming. The Raiders' purpose is to scout the surface of the Tomb World and any nearby star systems, seeking data on the location and status of the galaxy's other intelligent races. The destruction of a Raider force will produce one of two outcomes: the Tomb World may despatch a second Raider force to determine what happened to the first or the Tomb World may proceed immediately to the second stage of activation if a threat has been identified.**Reserve Command **- After the initial data gathered by the Raiders has been received by the Tomb World, the command of all Raider forces is subsumed under the Nodal Command of a Necron Lord, usually one tasked with a Silver-level of priority. When required, the Reserve Command will enter combat led by this Necron Lord, who also serves as a reserve commander who can take control of any already-deployed Necron forces should their primary Necron Lord be destroyed or incapacitated.**Necron Line Formations** - The majority of the units that make up a Necron field army are placed under this extension of the Nodal Command. Led by up to 4 Bronze-level Necron Lords, the Line Formations are made up of a wide variety of Necron fighting units. Ground forces are organised into units called phalanxes, which are made up of a core of Necron Warriors transported by Monoliths and supported by secondary fire support units like Destroyers, Immortals and so on. These phalanxes are often accompanied by units comprised of more specialised Necron troop types known as cohorts. The Necron Lords of the Line Formations serve as a battlefield command circuit that is able to pass data between themselves, upload data to the Platinum-level Necron Overlord or call upon the Reserve Command for reinforcements or a more in-depth analysis of tactical information. Each Tomb World may have dozens of full Line Formations, which are activated as needed by Tomb Spyders and inserted into or removed from the Nodal Command as the flow of combat dictates.**Priority Command** - Three Gold-level Necron Lords form the highest Necron command structure yet encountered by the forces of the Imperium on the battlefield. These Necron Lords are responsible for all strategic deciion-making and can override the command and communications of Bronze or Silver-level Necron Lords. They are also capable of committing and commanding the most powerful Necron units known to exist to combat, including the Pariahs, larger war machines like Tomb Stalkers, aerial forces and starships.**Platinum-level Commander** - No Platinum-level Necron Lord, known as a Necron Overlord, has yet been encountered by the Imperium and their existence has only so far been hypothesized from observing the actions of the Gold-level Necron Lords. It is still speculation amongst the few Imperial savants who have been trusted with data about the Necrons whether the Platinum-level Nodal Command is still hidden on a Tomb World or might perhaps even be the Tomb World itself. The Adeptus Mechanicus' Tech-priests, however, are quite confident that the Platinum-level Necron Overlord is not the C'tan, who do not interact with the Nodal Command structure in any obvious way, and who are, in fact, now the unwilling servants of their former slave race in the form of the C'tan Shards.Null Field Matrices

As creatures long without any kind of spiritual essence, the Necrons cannot project their minds into the Warp or harness its power to any degree. They are unable to use the Warp to journey across the galaxy and are thoroughly bereft of any native psykers. In many ways, this is a boon, for the Empyrean is always a fickle servant, given to wreaking havoc on those who seek to claim its power. Yet this absence of psychic ability enforces its own limitations, particularly when combating creatures to whom sorcery is as much a part of war as conventional munitions, as there is no surer defence against a psyker than another, more powerful, psyker.

To compensate, many Necron Tomb Worlds are shielded from psychic disturbance by vast Null Field Matrices. Developed during the War in Heaven, these networks of anti-psychic field emitters generate an unknown energy field that destabilises a psyker's connection to the Warp, rendering him unable to utilise his full power. Similarly,daemons in the presence of Null Field Matrices have a tendency to flicker in and out of existence, as if unable to maintain a solid foothold in reality. In the later years of the 41st Millennium, the Null Field Matrix has also proven to have a deleterious effect upon the Tyranids. The vassals of the Hive Mind are not immune to the unsettling soulessness of the Necrons, and the Null Field Matrix only serves to exacerbate this effect on the normally inviolate Hive Mind. Alas for the Necrons, such defences are far from complete. A Null Field Matrix requires incredible amounts of power to function properly and is a fragile device that must be hidden away ata Tomb World's very heart to prevent its destruction. Nonetheless, they stand as testaments to the Necrons' ability to create a technological defence against any form of attack, no matter its genesis. Additionally, it was a further extension of this same technology that led to the Necrons' uncompleted Great Work, the creation of the network of anti-psychic pylonserected on Cadia and many other worlds across the galaxy that were intended to cut off access to the Warp by all inhabitants of realspace forever. Luckily for the psykers of the galaxy, the Necrons entered the Great Sleep before this project could be completed, though it is possible that the Phaerons of the more active dynasties might like to see it completed...

Forces of the Necrons

Most Necrons are tall, skeletal figures made of a living metal calledNecrodermis that provides excellent protection in battle. It also has the special self-repair effect, which means even heavily damaged Necrons can quickly return to the battle. This ability seems to only work when the Necron is in the vicinity of other Necrons of the same type since the repairing Necron needs a "template" on which to re-create himself.

Another interesting phenomenon of the Necrons is that when a battle has turned strongly against them, the entire army will simply vanish from the battlefield using their unknown phase technology. This includes even 'dead' Necrons (those who have not yet repaired themselves) and those already engaged in close combat. Because of this, enemy forces like the Imperium have had great difficulty in obtaining Necron artifacts or "corpses" to study.

It should be noted that the terms for the weapons and Necrons that follow are given to them by their opponents, not the Necrons themselves. Aside from the C'tan known as the Deceiver, the Necrons never communicate with non-Necrons; and even then the Deceiver has only been observed communicating with non-Necrons rarely at best.

C'tan Shard

The C'tan or Necron "Star Gods", known in the Eldar Lexicon as the_Yngir,_ are said to be the oldest intelligent beings in existence in theMilky Way Galaxy. It is said that they were created at the very beginning of the universe, spawned from swirling gases and enormous amounts of energy, and as such are etheric creatures by nature. In their natural form they are vast beings and spread themselves over the surface of a star, absorbing its solar energy to feed themselves. After a time, they learned to use diaphanous wings to travel to other stars to continue their consumption when their host star died. The matter around them was so insignificant that it did not register on their voracious appetite. They are able to interact with the physical world thanks to the technology of the Necrontyr which transferred their consciousnesses into robotic bodies made of the living metal called necrodermis. The C'tan used the hatred of the Necrontyr towards the ancient species called the Old Ones to help them gather the more appetizing energy of living beings that they came to crave.

The C'tan hate the Warp and its psychic energies (even as they crave the living energies of organic beings) and had the Necrons construct a series of pylons on the world of Cadia and other planets across several sectors in the Segmentum Obscurus which, when completed, were intended to close off the Warp from the material universe entirely, utterly destroying any living creatures with a soul, leaving all other life in the galaxy as nourishment for the C'tan.

It was the C'tan who designed the process of bio-transference for the Necrontyr, transferring their proteges' consciousnesses into undying mechanical bodies composed of Necrodermis. However, the biotransference process also transformed the Necrontyr into the Necrons, soulless beings who have difficulty taking pleasure in anything and who can never truly enjoy their immortality. After the end of the War in Heaven against their ancient foes the Old Ones, the Necrons, led by the Silent King Szarekh, successfully rebelled against their C'tan Star Gods. Those C'tan who survived the revolt were broken into fragments known as C'tan Shards that were more easily contained and imprisoned within arcane Necron devices known as Tesseract Labyrinths. At present, since the Necrons' Great Awakening began in the mid-41st Millennium, these C'tan Shards are deployed when needed as the Necron Dynasties' greatest weapons on the battlefield. However, there always exists the possibility that the imprisoned C'tan will escape their captors. Then they will wreak a terrible vengeance upon their captors and the innocent alike...

A C'tan Shard is all that remains of the once mighty Star Gods of Necron antiquity. They are now only echoes of their former selves, splinters of energy that survived their Necron servants' ancient betrayal and were enslaved in turn. Most now languish in unbreakable servitude to their former vassals, utterly incapable of acting without commission. Should a C'tan Shard rebel, or a fault develop in its control relays, then fail-safe mechanisms automatically activate, whisking the creature back to its tomb, there to languish for long Terran centuries until times are dire enough that the Necrons must call upon its services again. Even with these precautions, the Necrons are wary of employing C'tan Shards in battle. Though the chance of escape is remote, the possibility remains, so the day must be dark indeed for the Necron cause before the Tesseract Labyrinths are opened and the C'tan unleashed upon the galaxy once again. In the late 41st Millennium, the foes of the Necrons have so far only encountered two types of C'tan Shard, those of Aza'gorod the Nightbringer and Mephet'ran the Deceiver.

Even now in their reduced and wholly fettered state, C'tan Shards are beings of near-unlimited power. They can manifest energy blasts, control the minds of lesser beings, manipulate the flow of time, and banish foes to alternate dimensions. Indeed, a C'tan Shard's abilities are limited only by two things: its imagination - which is immense - and glimmering memories of the being from which it was severed. Whilst no individual C'tan Shard has full recall of the omnipotent beings it once was, each carries the personality and hubris of that vaster and more puissant being. Though a C'tan Shard has the power to reduce a tank to molten slag with but a gesture, it might simply not occur to it to do so, as its gestalt primogenitor would have tackled the situation through other means, such as by devolving the crew into primordial ooze, or deceiving them into attacking their own allies. The only hope of defeating a C'tan is to breach its Necrodermis shell - the living metal form that cages its energetic essence. If the Necrodermis is compromised, the C'tan Shard explodes in a pulse of blinding energy, its being scattered to the galactic solar winds.

Whilst it is true that many C'tan Shards are now indentured to Necron service, this by no means accounts for the entire pantheon of C'tan. Rumours of C'tan-like beings can be found across the galaxy, though many are merely entities that exhibit inexplicable reality-warping powers. Indeed, any such being - whether Warp-spawned daemon, energy-based life form or an alien with advanced technology - can be mistaken for a C'tan if the observer is primitive, credulous or simply ill-informed enough. This discrepant information causes great confusion concerning the exact number and nature of the surviving C'tan, even among the Eldar. Records held in the Black Library contradict those maintained on Ulthwe, which are again at odds with the archives held on Alaitoc. There might be four C'tan at present in the galaxy, four thousand or any number in between. However, all Eldar agree that the splinters of knowledge held by the Imperium of Man are so flawed and confused that they, if anything, move further from the truth with each fresh discovery made. Any who go looking for proof of a C'tan's existence can easily uncover it, but this speaks more to the mindset of the searcher than it does to any value of the "evidence."

Transcendant C'tan are the most dangerous of their kind amongst the C'tan Shards. Each is an aggregation of anywhere between a dozen and a hundred lesser C'tan Shards, and its power far surpasses the sum of its parts. Those few that are chained to Necron service are not contained by Tesseract Labyrinths, but by energy shackles designed aeons ago by the legendary Necron artificer Svarokh. Such devices are unstable, making the deployment of a Transcendant C'tan without the device known as aTesseract Vault to contain it something of a risk, only undertaken in times of direst need. For this reason, when contained within a Tesseract Vault, a Transcendant C'tan is also kept within a special energy shield generated by a robotic Necron construct known as aCanoptek Sentinel. Canoptek Sentinels are used to control the raw elemental energies of a Transcendent C'tan. The Sentinel draws from the Transcendant C'tan's own power to generate a force shield strong enough to keep the C'tan shackled to the mechanisms of the Tesseract Vault.

The C'tan who are known to currently still exist include:

**Aza'gorod the Nightbringer** - Aza'gorod the Nightbringer has impressed its image as that of the grim reaper itself on the psyche of the younger races, apart from the Orks (since they do not fear death). Upon entering stasis it was almost destroyed and starved but was released accidentally by the Space Marines in the 41st Millennium, which caused the Necrons to begin to awaken from their ancient sleep. The Nightbringer is one of the two types of C'tan Shard that have so far been encountered by the foes of the Necrons since their Great Awakening.**Mephet'ran the Deceiver** - Mephet'ran the Deceiver came out of stasis an unknown time ago and has been weaving plots ever since, including the destruction of the ancient Old Ones weapons the Eldar call theTalismans of Vaul and the Imperium knows as the Blackstone Fortresses which were designed to destroy the C'tan on their emergence. The Deceiver is the second of the two types of C'tan Shard that have so far been encountered by the foes of the Necrons since their Great Awakening.**Mag'ladroth the Void Dragon** - Mag'ladroth the Void Dragon is the most powerful C'tan and still resides in stasis, theorised to be located beneath Mars in the Noctis Labrynthus. The Void Dragon is believed by someTech-priests to be the actual Machine God venerated by the Cult of the Machine of the Adeptus Mechanicus. A master of the material realm, this particular C'tan was a figure of oblivion, devastation and wanton destruction and it's warriors were nigh invincible.

The names of several other C'tan are known to the Imperium of Man and the Eldar, though they have not yet been encountered as active C'tan Shards and it remains unknown whether they still exist in Necron captivity like their brethren or have ceased to exist.

**Iash'uddra the Endless Swarm** - Nothing is currently known about this C'tan, other than that it exists.**Kalugura** - Kalugura is a C'tan who was captured and transformed into a C'tan Shard. Kalugura was once a horrific engine of destruction. This particular C'tan Shard was entombed on the world of Kalugura aeons ago, at the command of the Silent King Szarekh, then the supreme overlord of the Necron race's ruling Triarch. The reason why this Shard was imprisoned and is no longer deployed by the Necrons is unknown.**Og'driada, the Arisen** - Nothing is currently known about this C'tan, other than that it exists.**Nyadra'zatha the Burning One** - It was the C'tan known as Nyadra'zatha, the Burning One, who had long desired to carry his eldritch fires into the Webway and beyond, who enabled the Necrons to gain access to the Labyrinthine Dimension, showing the Necrons how to breach its boundaries. Through a series of living stone portals known as Dolmen Gates, the Necrons have finally been able to turn the Old Ones' greatest weapon to their own purpose. As a race bereft of psykers, the Necrons are incapable of Warp travel, and without access to the Webway, they would be forced to rely once more on slow-voyaging stasis-ships, dooming them to isolation within the galaxy.**Tsara'noga the Outsider** - Tsara'noga the Outsider became insane due to its consumption of other C'tan, a trick played on it by Cegorach, the Eldar Laughing God. It developed a hellish presence, causing madness in all who came close, and many killed themselves rather than have to face the Outsider. The Outsider shares some similarities with the Nightbringer, in that it is said that to look upon it would cause terror, much like the Nightbringer's infusion of terror in the younger races produced by the Old Ones. Furthermore, one of theHarlequins' many dances depicts the moment when the Laughing God tricked the C'tan into consuming each other, except that the C'tan depicted is the Nightbringer, rather than the Outsider. The Outsider is currently imprisoned in a Dyson Sphere beneath the galactic plane. The Harlequins whisper that "one dark night, it shall return."**Yggra'nya, the Shaper** - Nothing is currently known about this C'tan, other than that it exists.Necron Overlord

Of all the Necron Lords, the Necron Overlord is by far the most powerful and dangerous. At his command are uncountable legions of Necron Warriors, terrifying war machines and a vast array of devastating weaponry that could shatter entire worlds given half the chance. When he marches to war, the Necron Overlord does so with the surety of victory - he has cogitated and calculated every possible outcome in the ensuing conflict and formulated strategies to ensure that everything goes to plan. Only the most unlikely situations can outfox him and only the most potent foes have any chance of beating him in combat. Weapons glance off his armour or simply pass straight through him as he shifts in and out of reality using the Necrons phase shifting technology. In return, his own attacks are brutally meticulous as he severs heads, shatters armour and pulverises his foes with every swing of his ancient blade. Should a Necron Overlord rise to the position of Phaeron, and ruler of an entire sector, then few will have the strength to stand before his might.

Necron Lord

A Necron Lord is the most sophisticated of the ancient race of soulless xenos known as the Necrons. A Necron Lord serves as the commander and energy supply for the much larger Necron armies composed of the standard Necron Warriors. When the Necrontyrgave up their organic bodies to serve the C'tan, they transferred their consciousnesses into bodies made of the living metal "necrodermis". However, they soon discovered that over an extended period of time, their new robotic bodies dulled their minds and their ability to feel any type of emotion or pleasure. Over many millennia, the ultimate outcome of this process of gradual desensitisation was that the Necrons became the soulless warrior-slaves of the C'tan, harvesting intelligent life from across the galaxy to feed these souls to their insatiable masters. Only the most powerful and strong-willed of the Necron nobility, referred to as Necron Lords, managed to gain access to necrodermis bodies following biotransference that were sophisticated enough to allow them to maintain their full sentience in the face of the growing dullness of their minds. A Necron Lord is a high-ranking member of a Necron dynasty's noble hierarchy and is usually placed by the dynasty's Phaeron or his own Overlord in control of an entire Tomb World. Clad in crumbling vestments and wielding ancient, arcane staff weapons, the Necron Lord is a chilling sight to behold on the battlefield as they direct their Necron Warriors in unnatural silence. Their ancient metallic bodies are marred by the patina of age and they wear the accumulated power of millennia like a robe. With every silent gesture, glittering arcs of viridian energy surround them as their empty eye sockets burn with soulless fire.

Necron Cryptek

A Cryptek is one of the technologists and engineers of the Necron race, and they are responsible for studying and maintaining the technology of the Necron dynasties. A Cryptek's powers mirror that of the psykers found amongst the other intelligent species of the galaxy. However, while psykers channel the energies of the Warp to accomplish their seemingly supernatural feats, a Cryptek uses his highly advanced knowledge of science and technology to manipulate the universe's fundamental forces and produce many of the same seemingly magical effects. They are masters of dimensional dissonance, singularity manipulation, atomic transmutation, elemental transmogrification and countless other reason-defying technologies. What a Cryptek often accomplishes with his technology is nothing short of magical to the eyes of the lesser intelligent races. With his knowledge of arcane sciences, a Cryptek can transmute a foe into liquid adamantium, turn him into a speck of dwarf star matter, set the air ablaze, call down eldritch bolts of lightning and other equally impressive feats of technological arcana. Such technological aptitude and power is highly sought after by Necron Overlords, who will meet whatever demands are made by the Crypteks in exchange for their services.

Deathmarks

Necron Deathmarks are one of the highly-skilled snipers and assassins of the Necron forces, appearing from apparently nowhere and striking with terrible precision. The name is fitting: once given the "hunter's mark", a Deathmark's targets are almost certain to meet their deaths scant moments later. Like most Necrons, the Deathmarks' technology lies far beyond the realm of human comprehension and they can effectively phase in and out of normal space-time at will. Their victims will assume that they have been ambushed, that the Deathmarks teleported onto the battlefield. The reality is that they were already there, waiting out of phase for just the right moment to slaughter their victims. Few enemy commanders encounter Deathmarks and live to tell the tale. In appearance, Deathmarks are more akin to Necron Immortals in the craftsmanship of their mechanical bodies. They are distinguished by a single, large green-glowing eye and the arcane orbs projecting from their spines. These orbs flare with an unnatural light as a Deathmark utilises its occult powers. In keeping with their role, Deathmarks display a propensity for stealth that is all but unique amongst the Necron ranks. Moving as they do with the eerie silence that is the hallmark of the Necron legions, Deathmarks can be surprisingly stealthy for their slow, deliberate movements.

Triarch Praetorians

Triarch Praetorians hold a great responsibility - to ensure that the ruling Necron dynasties never fall. The Praetorians held the responsibility of maintaining the Triarch's rule, to ensure that wars and politics alike were pursued according to ancient codes. As such, they acted outside the political structures, and held both the right and the means to enforce their will should a Lord, Overlord or even a Phaeron's behaviour contravene the edicts of old. During the War in Heaven the Triarch Praetorians fought at the forefront of that cataclysm, but their efforts were all for naught. When the Necron race entered hibernation after the end of the War in Heaven over 60 million Terran years ago, the Triarch Praetorians chose to remain awake. Now, as the Necrons awaken once more into a strife-torn galaxy, the Triarch Praetorians have also re-emerged to serve the Necron Lords' dynastic legions. They will rarely join a battle immediately, preferring to hover above the fray on Gravity Displacement Packs before launching themselves right into the heart of the enemy army. With the devastating weapon known as a Rod of Covenant at their disposal there is very little that can survive the assault of a Triarch Praetorian.

Lychguard

The Necron Lychguard are the elite protectors and emissaries of the Necron nobility. In order to serve as a bulwark against those who would harm their charge, Lychguards were gifted with the highest quality of living metal bodies, equal in resilience and power to those inhabited by the Lords and Overlords they protect. In addition to serving as wardens, Lychguards often act as messengers and envoys for their masters. In order to better serve in this capacity, the personality and intellect of the Lychguards was preserved through the process of bio-transference to a much greater extent than the rank and file. As with other Necrons, Lychguards fulfil the same roles in undeath as they did in life, and, as with other Necrons, the capability for disobedience has been removed. The Necron Lords and Overlords of the 41st millennium need never worry about a treacherous knife in the back from a supposedly loyal guardian, making the Lychguards the last defence against the machinations of rival nobles. Owing to their powerful frames, Lychguards are taller and broader than Necron Warriors, with broad shoulder blades and a pronounced spine that extends above their heads. Reflecting their status and, perhaps, their individual preferences, Lychguards are often adorned with decorative headgear and segmented metal tabards. Lychguards are typically armed with warscythes, massive polearms with blades sheathed in a highly advanced and devastating power field. Backed up by the formidable strength of a Lychguard, a warscythe can split even an armoured warrior of the Adeptus Astartes nearly in two. Some will also carry Hyperphase Swords and Dispersion Shields, which are marginally less powerful, but offer increased protection.

Necron Warriors

y infantry troops of the soulless, robotic Necrons. They were created from the majority of the Necrontyr people who agreed to be bound to the will of their Star Gods, the terrible entities known as the C'tan. The Necrontyr's consciousnesses were transferred into robotic bodies made of the living metal called Necrodermis. Over a long period of time, the new unliving bodies dulled the Necrontyr's minds and their abilities to feel emotion or pleasure. Over many millennia, the ultimate outcome of this process of gradual desensitization was that the Necrontyr became little more than souless automatons, the warrior-slaves of the C'tan who scour the galaxy for souls to feed their insatiable masters' appetities for living energy. In battle, their massive numbers and superior firepower overwhelm their enemies before they retreat back to their Tomb complexes, awaiting the next call to battle from their Necron Lord. The skeletal forms of Necron Warriors are a spine-chilling sight to behold; kinetic projectiles and lasblasts bounce harmlessly from their metallic limbs. The Gauss Flayerwhich they wield is no less terrifying, as it strips its targets to atoms, dissolving skin and muscle in a heartbeat and then disintegrating bone until nothing remains.

Pariah

Pariahs are crafted from a terrible symbiosis of Necron technology and human evolution. They are created from human victims abducted by the Necrons who bear the "Pariah Gene" that severs the bearer's psyche completely from the Warp, effectively making them both soulless creatures and immune to the effects of all psychic abilities. However, despite this psychic immunity, Pariahs tend to not live long as the feelings of hatred and distaste they generate among others due to their soulless state means they have few friends and many enemies. Pariahs are very rare in the galaxy since perhaps only one person on an entire world will be a carrier of the gene in every human generation. Pariahs are often used by theInquisition and the Ordo Hereticus against the witches and renegadepsykers. Also, due to their soullessness, human Pariahs are completely without fear. Necron Pariahs are former human bearers of the Pariah gene who have been encased within new cybernetic bodies forged from the living metal called necrodermis by the Necrons and their minds are soon enslaved to the will of the Necron noble caste in a manner similar to the standard Necron Warriors as their new bodies drain their abilities to feel any emotion or pleasure. The Pariah Gene is extremely rare and confined solely to Mankind, meaning that Pariahs are quite rare in the galaxy, and there are very few even amongst the Necrons. Pariahs have an extreme detrimental effect on the psychic powers of any psykers they come into contact with. Pariahs wield spear-like Warscythes that are also outfitted with built-in Gauss Blasters that make them extremely dangerous opponents. Pariahs also radiate an unnatural aura as a result of their soullessness that has a terribly unnerving effect upon their enemies, but especially for psykers who can become incapacitated by their sheer presence.

Immortal

The Necron Immortals are those favoured Necrontyr who were among the first to give up their flesh and embrace the necrodermis and their C'tan gods. For this, they were rewarded by being turned into Immortals. In life, Immortals were the professional soldiery of the Necrontyr empire. In death, they surpass the Warriors in nearly every way. Possessed of even more resilient frames, Necron Immortals prove almost impervious to small arms. Their training and experience in combat survived the process of bio-transference undiminished, and Immortals seem to have retained a brighter spark of intellect than their less favoured brethren, although only in regard to the practice of war. Outside of combat, Immortals display about as much personality as a monotask servitor. Immortals are typically armed with gauss blasters, weapons even deadlier than the gauss flayers used by Warriors.

Flayed One

Flayed Ones are twisted and ghoulish terrors afflicted by an ancient infection that act as specialised close combat troops who appear from an unknown pocket dimension of their hideous kind to join the Necron armies in battle, though never by invitation from the Necrons themselves. These loathsome creatures were once Necrontyr who managed to retain some of their original consciousness when they were transferred into their living metallic bodies of necrodermis, but were cursed with a terrible disease, manifesting a hunger for flesh that cannot be satisfied and that eventually drove them to madness. Advancing before a Necron force, these stooped yet terrifyingly agile automatons excel at infiltrating and spreading terror like a plague within the ranks of their foes. They are quite capable melee fighters, and make use of flensing blades that extend from their fingers and can flay a man alive in seconds. Thin and wiry, they habitually adorn themselves with the still-wet pieces of skin and hide they have stripped from their victims, leaving behind the skinned corpses to sow fear and confusion. In such a state they are a terrifying sight to behold, so much so that enemy combatants lose their nerve when they see pieces of old squadmates hanging from the undying machines approaching their lines. In addition to their wicked claws, some Flayed Ones utilise Necron Disruption Field technology that allows them to rip even armoured vehicles apart.

Wraith

A Wraith is one of the more sophisticated units employed by the forces of the Necrons. Wraiths prowl the corridors of slumbering tombs of a Necron Tomb World, gliding silently through the cyclopean corridors, guarding against intrusion and ensuring the safety of its slumbering occupants. These grotesque floating killers lack legs or body except for a serpentine spinal column, and float over the battlefield using anti-gravity technology like ghosts. Their wide, hunched shoulders support a leering, skull face and long, whip-like arms that wield Necrodermis scalpel blades for fingers and a nightmare array of surgical implements. Moving with unnatural fluidity, Wraiths are fearsome in close combat, but what makes a Wraith such a fearful combatant, however, is the advanced phase shifter housed within its durable frame. This dimensional destabilisation matrix allows a Wraith to selectively phase parts of itself, whether that be momentarily phasing its body to avoid a strike, or even phasing its vicious claws in order to bypass armour and rip into the flesh of enemies. Thus, they have been granted the Imperial sobriquet of "Wraiths". This phase shifting ability which is based on the standard Necron phasing technology that they use to travel across the galaxy allows Wraiths to avoid physical damage from weapons or to even move through solid objects. It has been suggested by certain Imperial savants that in ancient days before the War in Heaven the Wraiths were once Necrontyr murderers and psychopaths before their eternal entombment within their cold, metallic husks.

Destroyer

Necron Destroyers are deranged agents of annhilation whose sole reason for existence is centred around an unshakeable yearning to quench the flames of life. A Destroyer cares not for borders or dynasty allegiance, nor does he maje any distinction between the innocent and the damned - all life is his enemy, and all living creatures are his prey. A Destroyer is a heavily altered variant of the Necron Immortal. Their torso is fused to a skimming anti-gravity flyer that enables them to attack faster and further than the standard Immortals. Destroyers are equally broad with a more pronounced spine from which their terrible weapons draw their power. Ferociously quick, the most common use for Destroyers is as mobile fire support platforms. Remaining at the forefront of the Necron force's bloody harvest, they reap a heavy toll on the enemy, the speed and ferocity of their attacks undiminished by their antiquity. Destroyers are equipped with a Gauss Cannon that reaps a heavy toll on their enemies and is especially effective against light infantry forces. Destroyers are even capable of reliably damaging light armoured vehicles. With their superior anti-gravity technology their mobility equals that of an Eldar Jetbike.

Destroyer Lord

A Necron Destroyer Lord is a sentient member of the Necron elite, a former Necron Lord or Overlord, who has fallen prey to the madness of the Necron Destroyers. Even the Necron nobility are not safe from the madness that consumes the Destroyers. When a Necron Lordor Overlord succumbs, a great threat to all life is born. Ironically, the only reason the Imperium is not aware of the extent of this threat is precisely because these Destroyer Lords are so aptly named. No one has borne witness to the atrocities committed by these steel harbingers of apocalypse and lived, and so it can only be guessed at the threat stirring on barren worlds scattered across the galaxy.

While many Necron Lords and Overlords are afflicted by "eccentricities," the insanity that consumes the mind of a Destroyer Lord is something else entirely. Like other Destroyers, Destroyer Lords modify their bodies and minds, so that they might be better suited to their overarching purpose, to cleanse the stars of all life. While this most often includes the attachment of an anti-gravitic suspensor platform in place of legs, Destroyer Lords tend to forgo the ranged weaponry favoured by other Destroyers in favour of melee weapons. The Warscythe is a particular favourite, as a Destroyer Lord hovering above the heads of his enemies can take full advantage of the reach afforded by these massive melee weapons. Curiously, Destroyer Lords forgo the decorative finery commonly worn by Necron royalty. Whether this is representative of their single-minded obsession, an intentional statement, or a simple matter of practicality, none can say, for the Destroyer Lords are avoided by their former peers as much as the other Destroyers, and are not keen to engage in conversation (except to learn the location of potential targets).

Canoptek Wraith

A Canoptek Wraith serves as the eyes and ears of the central operating systems of any Tomb World, patrolling for intruders and inspecting the Necron sanctuary's ancient systems for signs of damage and decay. Its primary weapon is its Phase Shifter, a dimensional destabilisation matrix. This is an advanced Necron technology that allows the Wraith to phase in and out of synch with the normal space-time continuum, and which was originally designed to allow a Canoptek Wraith to reach into and repair solid machinery, though it is equally effective when used to deal with intruders who have breached the protections of a subterranean Necron stasis facility. A Canoptek Wraith can phase its claws and tendrils inside an opponent, and resolidify them to sever arteries, nerve clusters and other vital pathways without leaving an external mark of what caused the victim's death.

Canoptek Spyders

Canoptek Spyders are huge metal constructs, their immense weight effortlessly propelled by sophisticated anti-gravitic engines. Their bodies are large and rounded in order to accommodate the internal systems that construct the smaller constructs known as Canoptek Scarabs as needed. This, combined with their multiple limbs and compound visual sensors, give an arachnoid aspect that enhances the fearful appearance of these monstrous robots. The fabricator claws that allow Canoptek Spyders to effect repairs on nearly any of the tomb's systems also make for frighteningly destructive weapons, and they sometimes sport additional weaponry. When the Necrons do rise from their crypts, Canoptek Spyders often accompany them in battle, both for their combat abilities and their capability for repairing damage that is beyond even the abilities of their Necron masters' advanced systems.

Tomb Stalker

The Tomb Stalker is a massive Necron construct that serves as a guardian on Necron Tomb Worlds. The Tomb Stalker is the Necron equivalent of a small Imperial Battle Titan. During their long periods of dormancy the Necrons left their sepulchres guarded by silent, tireless machines. Of these powerful constructs, the most fearsome known to Mankind is the Tomb Stalker. The Tomb Stalker is an enormous mass of living-metal carapace teeming with flashing legs and possessed of a murderous will. Easily the size of a dozen men, this centipede-like robotic construct makes use of arcane Phase Generators, allowing it to stalk the Tomb World of its slumbering Necron lords, burrowing through solid ground. It uses its powerful senses to trail its prey from miles away and can sense the frenzied rhythm of a panicked man's heartbeat through hundreds of metres of solid stone. The Stalker's immense size combined with its natural capacity for regeneration as a result of its Necrodermis carapace creates a nearly indestructible creature. Even beyond the more common warriors of the undying Necron legions, these insectoid constructs continue to thrash and fight with deadly ferocity despite damage or dismemberment. The individual segments of the insect-like machine seem drawn to one another and will reconstitute themselves to reform the whole mechanical nightmare should they come back into contact.

Necron Fleets

While Necron forces are usually land-based, Necron space vessels are not unheard of, and they are quite possibly much more common than people realize, and simply not seen. This is supported by the Necrons' terrifying ability to appear anywhere using their phase technology. There are more than two dozen records of Necron contacts in space in Imperial archives, and accounts of other intelligent races like the Orks, Eldar and Tau battling Necron fleets also exist. Necron technology is beyond anything the galaxy has ever seen, surpassing even that of the highly advanced Eldar. Their voidships are stunningly fast and agile, equipped with propulsion systems which are capable of traveling interstellar distances without entering the Warp. This is achieved, as far as is known, by somehow making their ships unbound by inertia or mass, allowing them to accelerate almost instantly and infinitely, which explains why Necron voidships are often seen to be visibly decelerating upon reaching the site of battle. This also protects them from many of the practical problems and dangers of Warp travel. All Necron starships are well-armored innecrodermis, equipped with self-repair systems and utilize some sort of advanced stealth technology which makes them difficult to detect for enemy targeting systems, granting Necron vessels surprising staying power. Although still devastating, Necron naval weaponry does not seem to match the raw power of some Imperial designs. However, the Necrons weaponry is known to bypass many conventional defense systems, such as void shields and even Eldar holofields, and strike with an unearthly accuracy.

In every battle so far the Necrons could only be defeated by superior numbers, and engaging Necrons on even terms proved to be suicidal. Fortunately, all of the Necron fleets encountered so far were small task forces that usually disengaged and phased out like their land-based counterparts, rather than putting up a full fight. But their frequency seems to be increasing and the possibility of a massive Necron attack is dreaded by the Imperium as well as other sentient races. Even as a raiding force, they are a serious threat because they are fully capable of outmaneuvering most other fleets (probably with the exception of the Eldar and their dark kin) to pick fights on an even footing. This often leads to catastrophic losses for enemy fleets and forces them to somehow stall with an utterly inferior fighting force for overwhelming reinforcements to arrive, at which point the Necrons simply disengage and phase away.

Necrodermis

Necrodermis is the xenos material created millions of years ago by the Necrontyr species that is often described as "living metal." Literally, the name means "corpse skin" (from Greek νεκρος and δερμις, or dermis). It was originally used by the Necrontyr to construct their massive sub-light starships that explored and settled the Milky Way Galaxy millions of years ago. It was later adapted to create the robotic bodies possessed by the C'tan and inhabited by the Necrontyr after they agreed to have their consciousnesses transferred from their short-lived organic forms. This process transformed the Necrontyr into the undying Necrons.

Necrodermis is a material of unknown origin and chemical or molecular structure that possesses the extraordinary ability to regenerate almost all damage instantaneously, "flowing" back together as if it were a liquid while closing bullet holes, mending gashes and tears, or even reattaching severed pieces with little delay. The material is also adaptive in some unknown fashion and can learn to repair itself given enough time from nearly any form of damage, even a blast powerful enough to reduce it to its constituent molecules or atoms. In addition to the bodies of the C'tan and the Necrons themselves, all Necron vehicles and starships are made from Necrodermis, including Monoliths andGauss Pylons. The Imperium's C'tan Phase Weapons are also crafted from Necrodermis. It should be noted that Necrodermis is not an alloy of other metals but a fundamentally new material created by the Necrontyr. Necrodermis is unbelievably resilient, and can absorb incredible amounts of damage and then reform all tears or punctures over a period of time.

Ship

Cairn-class Tomb Ship

A Cairn-class Tomb Ship is the largest type of Necron starship that the Imperium of Man has encountered to date. Gigantic vessels that stretch more than 15 kilometres across at the beam, Tomb Ships are heavily-armed with potent Necron ship-based weaponry like the Sepulchre, Lightning Arcs, Star Pulse Generators, and Particle Whips as well as smaller Gauss Weapon defence turrets. Tomb Ships are more than a match for the Imperial Navy's Battleships, and often leave nothing but destruction and carnage in their wake.  
As with all known Necron vessels, Tomb Ships possess an unknown form of drive technology that allows the ship to undertake interstellar travel without the need to enter the Warp. The Tomb Ship's drive technology eliminates the spacecraft's inertia, allowing it travel at extreme speeds and with extreme acceleration, whilst also giving the spacecraft an agility that few other ships can match. In truth, however, Tomb Ships, like all Necron spacecraft, primarily rely upon the use of Dolmen Gates to serve as portals into the Webway, which allows them to cross the vastness of space without resorting to the use of the Warp since the undying Necrons possess no psykers.

History

Fortunately for the Necrons' enemies, Tomb Ships are very rare, having been encountered only seven times by Imperial forces in the late 41st Millennium since the Necrons' reemergence from hibernation on their Tomb Worlds, according to Imperial records. Each time, the Tomb Ship was part of a large Necron force that included at least three Scythe-class Harvest Ships. All of the Tomb Ships thus far encountered by the Imperium have been of the same design, which is indicative of a starship that was developed to the pinnacle of its design many millions of Terran years ago. There has as yet been no indication of the existence of a type of Tomb Ship other than the Cairn-class save for the single rumour of a Necron starship larger than the average Space Hulk that is alleged to have engaged an Ork fleet, though this remains unconfirmed Ork hearsay. Imperial agents are eagerly seeking more information about this possible threat.

Armament

Tomb Ships are composed entirely out of Necrodermis, a unique living metal which comprises the undying mechanical bodies of every Necron warrior, vehicle and starship. The material's regenerative properties and hardy nature means that Tomb Ships are immune to the detrimental effects posed by celestial phenomena such as solar flares, radiation, gas clouds and nebulae, and are also able to repair their armour at a rapid pace during an engagement. However, standard Necron combat protocol dictates that a clean disengagement is preferable to a fight to the end, and Tomb Ships will do this by "fading out," where the vessel in question dematerialises into an unknown extradimensional space; taking it out of the battle. The standard armament of a Cairn-class Tomb Ship includes:  
Sepulchre – A Sepulchre is only utilised by the largest Necron vessel in a given fleet. When a Sepulchre is used to attack an enemy ship that has foolishly come within its range, a wave of palpable psychic force is generated and sent outwards in all directions. The enemy's crew are then paralysed by visions of horror, and if discipline is lost, then the crazed crew are likely to do damage to their own ship as they rampage uncontrollably through its confines.  
Star Pulse Generator – A Star Pulse Generator sends out a massive pulse of energy when activated. Whilst other Necron ships are shielded from this attack, enemy vessels within the field of force's radius are usually severely damaged if not destroyed outright by the immense energies released.  
Lightning Arc Batteries – Lightning Arcs use stored solar energy and, when activated, release it as a forest of living energy tendrils which envelop targets and probe for weaknesses. Lightning Arcs act as the main weapon batteries for Necron ships, but are different from the equivalents used by the other starfaring species of the galaxy in that the arcs they fire are able to split up and guide themselves to their own targets, providing a mass-strike ability like no other known ship-based weapon. A Lightning Arc battery is usually able to cover all angles of approach except for the rear.  
Particle Whip Batteries – Particle Whips are the preferred ranged weapon of Necron warships, and work by projecting a magnetic field across a short arc. This arc is sufficient to be "cracked" like a whip and the anti-matter particles within the stream detonate upon impact with normal matter. When a target is hit, the beam's power acts in a similar way to a strike from a Lightning Arc, albeit focussed upon a smaller area like a Lance weapon. A Particle Whip battery is usually able to cover all angles of approach except for the rear.  
Portal – Portals are vast stone gateways located within a Necron warship that act as extradimensional conduits for boarding enemy vessels. More precise than conventional Imperial Teleporters, they are most commonly used to flood enemy starships with a relentless host of Necron Warriors and swarms of Canoptek Scarabs.

Scythe-class Harvest Ship

A Scythe-class Harvest Ship is a Necron starship that has been a part of every Necron fleet so far encountered by the Imperium of Man. The Harvest Ship is more common in Necron fleets than the larger and more powerful Cairn-class Tomb Ships and more akin to a Cruiser in its combat role. The vessels are so named because they have been present when the Necrons "harvest" the population of various inhabited worlds as part of their ongoing research into what they have termed "apotheosis", the return of their consciousness to organic bodies. The Necrons seek an organic, intelligent species that is compatible with their own neural physiology and can be used as new hosts for their return to life. To this end, they routinely harvest the populations of many different intelligent species for a series of grisly biomedical experiments that will help them achieve their goal.  
All of the Harvest Ships encountered by the Imperium appear to belong to the same class, with the only difference being the inclusion of a Sepulchre-like chamber on some of the starships, though this does not change their outward appearance, nor does it appear to function in the same manner as the Sepulchre portals used on Tomb Ships for boarding operations. Harvest Ships have proved to be incredibly resilient and difficult warships to destroy. To date Imperial ships have only been able to disable a Harvest Ship on three occasions, and in all three cases it required the firepower of several Imperial Navy capital ships to achieve the feat. The Harvest Ship's resilient design, combined with its armament of sophisticated and devastatingly effective Necron weaponry, makes it a match for all but the largest Imperial spacecraft.

As with all known Necron vessels, Harvest Ships possess an unknown form of drive technology that allows the ship to undertake interstellar travel without the need to enter the Warp. The Harvest Ship's drive technology eliminates the spacecraft's inertia, allowing it travel at extreme speeds and with extreme acceleration, whilst also giving the spacecraft an agility that few other ships can match. In truth, however, Harvest Ships, like all Necron spacecraft, primarily rely upon the use of Dolmen Gates to serve as portals into the Webway, which allows them to cross the vastness of space without resorting to the use of the Warp since the undying Necrons possess no psykers.

A Dirge-class Raider is a Necron starship that is the smaller and rarer of the two Escort-sized Necron warships so far encountered and formally identified by the Imperium of Man; the other being the Jackal-class Raider. Whether its lack of numbers in a Necron fleet is universally the case or simply a matter of chance is unknown. Dirge-class Raiders, although never formally identified at the time, are now believed to account for many of the vessels occasionally sighted by Imperial Explorators even before the Yuctan Incident and the first known Necron harvest of an entire world's population as part of their biomedical experiments surrounding the attainment of "apotheosis," the quest to return their consciousnesses to organic forms. In 692.M41 an impenetrable layer of unidentified metal was found several hundred metres beneath the surface of Angelis, later to be revealed to be some form of alien spacecraft when the vessel rose entirely out of the sand and departed without trace. In the light of later events, it would seem probable that this "Angelis Boat," as it was dubbed by the Explorator team researching it, was in fact a Dirge-class Raider.

As with all known Necron vessels, Dirge-class Raiders possess an unknown form of drive technology that allows the ship to undertake interstellar travel without the need to enter the Warp. The Raider's drive technology eliminates the spacecraft's inertia, allowing it travel at extreme speeds and with extreme acceleration, whilst also giving the spacecraft an agility that few other ships can match. In truth, however, Dirge-class vessels, like all Necron spacecraft, primarily rely upon the use of Dolmen Gates to serve as portals into the Webway, which allows them to cross the vastness of space without resorting to the use of the Warp since the undying Necrons possess no psykers.  
Armament  
Dirge-class Raiders are composed entirely out of Necrodermis, a unique living metal which comprises the undying mechanical bodies of every Necron warrior, vehicle and starship. The material's regenerative properties and hardy nature means that Raiders are immune to the detrimental effects posed by celestial phenomena such as solar flares, radiation, gas clouds and nebulae, and are also able to repair their armour at a rapid pace during an engagement. However, standard Necron combat protocol dictates that a clean disengagement is preferable to a fight to the end, and Dirge-class vessels will do this by "fading out," where the vessel in question dematerialises into an unknown extradimensional space; taking it out of the battle. The standard armament of a Dirge-class Raider includes:  
Lightning Arc Batteries – Lightning Arcs use stored solar energy and, when activated, release it as a forest of living energy tendrils which envelop targets and probe for weaknesses. Lightning Arcs act as the main weapon batteries for Necron ships, but are different from the equivalents used by the other starfaring species of the galaxy in that the arcs they fire are able to split up and guide themselves to their own targets, providing a mass-strike ability like no other known ship-based weapon. A Lightning Arc battery is usually able to cover all angles of approach except for the rear. 

A Jackal-class Raider is a Necron starship that has been part of every Necron fleet so far encountered by the Imperium of Man. Necron fleets have always included numbers of smaller ships roughly equivalent to Imperial Escort vessels. Although there have been two instances of such craft operating on their own, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule, and it appears that they are usually very closely controlled by the Tomb Ships or Harvest Ships in their fleet. The Jackal is the slightly larger of the two types of Necron Escort vessels so far encountered, with the other being the Dirge-class Raider.  
As with all known Necron vessels, Jackal-class Raiders possess an unknown form of drive technology that allows the ship to undertake interstellar travel without the need to enter the Warp. The Raider's drive technology eliminates the spacecraft's inertia, allowing it travel at extreme speeds and with extreme acceleration, whilst also giving the spacecraft an agility that few other ships can match. In truth, however, the Jackal-class, like all Necron spacecraft, primarily relies upon the use of Dolmen Gates to serve as portals into the Webway, which allows them to cross the vastness of space without resorting to the use of the Warp since the undying Necrons possess no psykers.

Jackal-class Raiders are composed entirely out of Necrodermis, a unique living metal which comprises the undying mechanical bodies of every Necron warrior, vehicle and starship. The material's regenerative properties and hardy nature means that Raiders are immune to the detrimental effects posed by celestial phenomena such as solar flares, radiation, gas clouds and nebulae, and are also able to repair their armour at a rapid pace during an engagement. However, standard Necron combat protocol dictates that a clean disengagement is preferable to a fight to the end, and Raiders will do this by "fading out," where the vessel in question dematerialises into an unknown extradimensional space; taking it out of the battle. The standard armament of a Jackal-class Raider includes:  
Lightning Arc Batteries – Lightning Arcs use stored solar energy and, when activated, release it as a forest of living energy tendrils which envelop targets and probe for weaknesses. Lightning Arcs act as the main weapon batteries for Necron ships, but are different from the equivalents used by the other starfaring species of the galaxy in that the arcs they fire are able to split up and guide themselves to their own targets, providing a mass-strike ability like no other known ship-based weapon. A Lightning Arc battery is usually able to cover all angles of approach except for the rear.  
Portal – Portals are vast stone gateways located within a Necron warship, and act as extradimensional conduits for boarding enemy vessels. More precise than conventional Imperial Teleporters, they are most commonly used to flood enemy starships with a relentless host of Necron Warriors and swarms of Canoptek Scarabs.

Shroud-class Light Cruiser

A Shroud-class Light Cruiser is a Necron starship that has only recently appeared in the Necron fleets so far encountered by the Imperium of Man. The Shroud-class' existence was first recorded in 992.M41 during an engagement with the Battlefleet Pacificus of the Imperial Navy. In the six standard years immediately after, vessels of this configuration were observed on three occasions, and each time disengaged before Imperial vessels could bring them under fire. It was believed by Imperial intelligence that either the class of vessel or the crew of the ship was being tested in some way.  
As with all known Necron vessels, Shroud-class Light Cruisers possess an unknown form of drive technology that allows the ship to undertake interstellar travel without the need to enter the Warp. The Shroud-class' drive technology eliminates the spacecraft's inertia, allowing it travel at extreme speeds and with extreme acceleration, whilst also giving the spacecraft an agility that few other ships can match. In truth, however, Shroud-class vessels, like all Necron spacecraft, primarily rely upon the use of Dolmen Gates to serve as portals into the Webway, which allows them to cross the vastness of space without resorting to the use of the Warp since the undying Necrons possess no psykers.

Shroud-class vessels excel at the task of fleet reconaissance and are often deployed as the advance scouts for a Necron assault force, as they are especially stealthy vessels. A Shroud-class Light Cruiser's hull shape is a further refinement of normal Necron designs, making it very hard to detect using Imperial sensor technology; so hard, in fact, that orbital mines will even fail to activate when a Shroud-class vessel passes. Shroud-class warships are also equipped with superior sensors which are capable of relaying information gleaned to the rest of a Necron fleet, making them the Necrons' vessel of choice for long-range reconaissance. The Imperial Navy has designated the Shroud-class to be a grave threat to their installations, for if they can penetrate the formidable defences of Mars with ease, as they did in 998.M41, then there is no Imperial base which can be considered safe from Necron penetration.

Doom Scythe

Doom Scythes are heralds of terror and dismay, supersonic fighter craft that range far ahead of a Necron invasion. Unlike many of the forces deployed by the Necrons, Doom Scythes can function in a highly independent manner. Much of the aircraft's super-structure houses datastacks that are in turn heavily laden with strike plans, stratagems and tactical variants. When faced with a situation outside of known parameters, the pilot can sift through and retrieve the correct response from this datastack. Thanks to the ruthless precision of his android brain, the pilot can simulate billions of possible strategies in the span of a few nanoseconds.  
A Doom Scythe is piloted by a Necron Immortal who is hard-wired into his aircraft. Because of his robotic nature, the pilot is uninhibited by mortal frailties and is able to steer the craft to higher speeds and perform more extreme manoeuvres than pilots of flesh and blood. Likewise, a Doom Scythe is also a small spacecraft that fulfils the Attack Craft role in Necron fleets, despite the lack of a cockpit to protect the pilot; such niceties as oxygen and pressure are of little consequence for the undying form of the Necrons.

Doom Scythes are often deployed to sap the resolve of the enemy before the battle beings in proper, for its presence induces an almost irrational terror in living creatures. A Doom Scythes primary propulsion systems is a scaled up and augmented version of the dimensional repulsor drive employed by Tomb Blades. On these smaller craft, the whine of the drive is piercing and discomforting. On a Doom Scythe, the scale and amplitude of the sound is many hundreds times greater; it resonates deep within the primitive core of living brains, playing havoc with memory, perception and sanity. Victims can collapse into a catatonia, slump into slack-jawed vacuity and suffer hallucinations of their dead comrades returned to worm-eaten life. Little wonder is it then that entire armies of battle-tested veterans have been known to throw down their weapons and flee at a Doom Scythe's onset, or else gouge out their own eyes in futile attempts to stop the images scratching at their senses.  
Should the foe not yield in battle on the Doom Scythe's first pass, its pilot will then unleash the full fury of the aircraft's firepower. Tesla Destructors explode into life, raking the battlefield with arcs of eldritch lightning, instantly incinerating any infantry not cowering in cover. Armoured targets can perhaps weather this sizzling storm, but they cannot hope to stand against the fury of the Doom Scythe's main weapon - the aptly named and rightly feared Death Ray. There is seldom a warning before the Death Ray strikes, for any sound it makes is lost under the unearthly wailing of the Doom Scythe's engines. A particularly alert foe might recognise the nimbus of energy building up around the focusing crystal, or the abrupt change in air pressure; but few recognise the significance in time. The nimbus pulses one final time and an irresistible beam of blinding white light bursts from the Doom Scythe's underside, vaporising infantry and tanks alike; leaving only charred and rutted terrain in its wake. A single Doom Scythe can carve its way through an entire armoured column so long as its Death Ray remains operational; and a full squadron can reduce the sprawling spires of a hive city to fulminating slag in less than an hour.

Armament  
Death Ray – The Death Ray is a Doom Scythe's primary weapon, and is capable of vaporising whole battle lines with a single shot. Equipped as part of an underslung turret, a Death Ray fires a narrow beam of intense energy capable of passing through many enemy units and vehicles before the energy is dissipated, often leaving nothing but a line of ruin in its wake.  
Twin-linked Tesla Destructor – A Doom Scythe's secondary weapon is its twin-linked Tesla Destructor which is also mounted upon the same underslung ventral turret as the Death Ray. A Tesla Destructor is mainly an anti-personnel weapon, though only the most heavily armed tanks can risk its wrath with utter impunity. The Tesla Destructor employs much the same lightning-arc technology as found in the smaller Tesla Cannons and Tesla Carbines. Its energy discharges of crackling lightning can wreak terrible harm on living targets; searing their flesh, melting their armour and boiling their blood. Furthermore, the Tesla bolts fired feed off energy released by the destruction they cause, often meaning that the lightning becomes more ferocious with each arc. So powerful are the blasts from a Tesla Destructor, and such is its shocking rapidity of fire, that the lightning emitted is capable of leaping from target to target before it is finally grounded; leaving a trail of smoldering carnage across a broad swathe of the battlefield behind it.  
Necrodermis - The armour of Doom Scythes is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that makes up all Necron bodies and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself; whether this is the regeneration of parts of its hull, the reknitting of metal plates, and the reconnection of circuits and other delicate systems to bring its weapons online again.  
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Night Scythe

Should a Phaeron wish to reach out his hand and reclaim one of the planets sundered long ago from Necron rule, his first wave of attack inevitably includes a fleet of Night Scythes. Manoeuvrable enough to evade incoming for from orbital defence platforms and swift enough to outpace mustering defenders, Night Scythes can ghost through a defence perimeter to deploy invasion forces directly at the heart of key enemy installations and strategic locations. Once a foothold has been established, coordinates are relayed to the main army, enabling Monoliths and other Necron forces to teleport into position, and the invasion to begin.  
Night Scythes are piloted by a Necron Immortal who is hard-wired into his aircraft. Because of this robotic nature, the pilot is uninhibited by mortal frailties and is able to steer the aircraft to higher speeds and perform more extreme manoeuvres than pilots of flesh and blood. Likewise, a Night Scythe is also a small spacecraft that fulfils the attack craft role in Necron fleets, despite the lack of a cockpit to protect the pilot; such niceties as oxygen and pressure are of little consequence for the undying form of the Necrons.

Unlike the armoured carriers employed by other races, the Night Scythe does not have a transport compartment as such. Instead, it deploys its troops by means of a captive wormhole whose far end is anchored on a distant Tomb World. Through this is less flexible than a Monolith's Eternity Gate, it does allow a Night Scythe to mimic the battlefield role of a more conventional transport vehicle without jeopardising the existence of its assigned squad. If the Night Scythe is destroyed, its payload squad is simply isolated from the battle until an alternate means of deployment can be established. Though this invariably prevents the squad from taking part in the immediate battle, this is preferable to them being destroyed outright as they can join the campaign's later stages.  
Night Scythes are often employed as far-ranging scout ships, tasked with making contact with other Tomb Worlds or searching out lost Necron planets suitable for reclamation. On worlds where the interlopers are either few in number or primitive in nature, a Night Scythe spearheads a ruthless subjugation. On worlds where other life forms have taken strong root, the pilot of a Night Scythe clandestinely performs probes and biopsies of the inhabitants, preying on isolated settlements and convoys whilst it searches for clues that will identify the inhabiting race's suitability for apotheosis. Such tests are long and exhaustive, and the pilot is often forced to dissect entire townships in order to harvest sufficient data. On a particularly promising planet, a Night Scythe's pilot may go as far as to transport living samples back to its Tomb World for further inspection by its Crypteks. Most such subjects do not survive the scientific method that follows, but are instead stripped down molecule by molecule and neuron by neuron. A few abductees are returned to their homes, but even in these cases they are most likely implanted with Mindshackle Scarabs or other mental control mechanisms to enable them to function as unsuspecting Necron spies and saboteurs who will pave the for an imminent invasion.

Armament  
Twin-linked Tesla Destructor – A Night Scythe's primary weapon is its twin-linked Tesla Destructor, which is mainly an anti-personnel weapon though only the most heavily armed tanks can risk its wrath with utter impunity. The Tesla Destructor employs much the same lightning-arc technology as found in the smaller Tesla Cannons and Tesla Carbines. Its energy discharges of crackling lightning can wreak terrible harm on living targets; searing their flesh, melting their armour and boiling their blood. Furthermore, the Tesla bolts fired feed off energy released by the destruction they cause, often meaning that the lightning becomes more ferocious with each arc. So powerful are the blasts from a Tesla Destructor, and such is its shocking rapidity of fire, that the lightning emitted is capable of leaping from target to target before it is finally grounded; leaving a trail of smoldering carnage across a broad swathe of the battlefield behind it.  
Wormhole Portal – All Night Scythes are fitted with a captive wormhole portal bound into their lower hull. This portal serves as a dimensional passageway through which Necrons can move from their Tomb World to the target destination once the Night Scythe has landed. Because of the transdimensional nature of this transport "compartment," the Necrons "within" do not suffer any ill effects if the Night Scythe is destroyed. This portal is also capable of allowing Necron jump infantry, such as Triarch Praetorians with Gravity Displacement Packs, and Jetbikes, such as Tomb Blades, to pass through, as their bulky nature is not restricted by a small "interior space" that is the norm in the transports of other starfaring races.  
Necrodermis - The armour of Night Scythes is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that makes up all Necron bodies and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself; whether this is the regeneration of parts of its hull, the reknitting of metal plates, and the reconnection of circuits and other delicate systems to bring its weapon online again.  
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Night Shroud

A Night Shroud is a dedicated Necron strategic bomber whose origins date back many millions of Terran years to the lost battles of the War in Heaven. It is a potent relic of that ancient and apocalyptic conflict that the Night Shroud was originally designed and built to carry - the Death Sphere, a self-enclosed containment vessel carrying an anti-matter warhead capable of wiping from existence anything it encounters. The Night Shroud is larger and more robustly constructed than the far more numerous Night Scythe and Doom Scythe fighter and attack aircraft alongside which it operates. Night Shrouds were used extensively by the nobility of the Necron Maynarkh Dynasty during the Orphean War fought in the Orpheus Sector of the Segmentum Tempestus, flying with their Doom Scythe and Night Scythe escorts whilst they rained destruction down upon the Imperial defenders.  
A Night Shroud is piloted by a Necron Immortal who is hard-wired into his aircraft. Because of his undying, robotic nature, the pilot is uninhibited by mortal frailties and is able to steer the aircraft at higher speeds and perform more extreme manoeuvres than pilots of flesh and blood. Likewise, a Night Shroud is also a small spacecraft that fulfils the Attack Craft role in Necron fleets, despite the lack of a cockpit to protect the pilot; such niceties as oxygen and pressure are of little consequence for the undying form of the Necrons. A Night Shroud's design is, whilst similar to its smaller brethren, larger overall. This is primarily due to the extended rear and additional engines added to the primary "crescent" shaped hull. The Night Shroud also features thicker armour plating, secondary crescent "wings" attached to the original Doom and Night Scythe design, and an enclosed cockpit with extensive sensor arrays.

Armament  
All Night Shrouds are armed with the following:  
Five Death Spheres – Unlike the conventional bombing munitions of the younger races of the Milky Way Galaxy, the Death Spheres carried by a Night Shroud and its larger brethren are force field containment vessels that electromagnetically imprison the merest fragment of anti-matter. They are kept out of phase with the rest of the material universe until the sphere detonates, unleashing a wide annihilating energy blast of pure gamma radiation that is capable of destroying virtually anything within its radius. Anything lucky enough to survive the initial detonation is often left blinded and pinned; easy prey for advancing Necron forces that are soon to follow in the bomber's wake. The true marvel of Necron science is not merely the caging of such destructive forces, however, but their precise control and the safety of their use, for should a Death Sphere be broken by hostile action, its energy harmlessly dissipates out of phase with reality instead of detonating in a likely cataclysmic wave of force upon contacting any form of normal matter.  
Twin-linked Tesla Destructors – A Night Shroud's secondary weapon is its twin-linked Tesla Destructors which are also mounted upon an underslung ventral turret. A Tesla Destructor is mainly an anti-personnel weapon, though only the most heavily armed tanks can risk its wrath with utter impunity. The Tesla Destructor employs much the same lightning-arc technology as found in the smaller Tesla Cannons and Tesla Carbines. Its energy discharges of crackling lightning can wreak terrible harm on living targets, searing their flesh, melting their armour and boiling their blood. Furthermore, the Tesla bolts fired feed off energy released by the destruction they cause, so that the lightning released becomes more ferocious with each arc. So powerful are the blasts from a Tesla Destructor, and such is its shocking rapidity of fire, that the lightning emitted is capable of leaping from target to target before it is finally grounded, leaving a trail of smoldering carnage across a broad swathe of the battlefield behind it.  
Necrodermis – The armour of the Night Shroud is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that comprises the bodies of the Necrons themselves, as well as all of their artefacts and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself. This means that the Night Shroud can regenerate the parts of its hull, reknit its metal plates, and reconnect any circuits and other delicate systems required to bring its weapons online again.  
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Tomb Blade

A Tomb Blade is an anti-gravitic Necron combination void fighter and Jetbike which operates using dimensional repulsor units to operate in both the void and the atmosphere of a world and unleash powerful firepower upon enemy starships, vehicles and ground forces as they corkscrew wildly through the ether. Often deployed as part of a vanguard force, the Tomb Blade's deadly speed and unpredictable nature make it a dangerous foe.  
Role  
The Tomb Blade was originally designed as a void fighter by the Necrons during the final days of the War in Heaven. As a Necron's robotic body is immune to the hazards of interplanetary space, traditional pressure-sealed and canopied voidcraft were unnecessary from the very outset. Acting in swarms that were dozens or even hundreds strong, Tomb Blades would swarm over enemy capital ships, overwhelming armour and weapon systems with pinpoint waves of Gauss and Tesla fire. So successfully did the voidcraft perform in its primary environment that modified versions soon appeared in planet side battles - one of the few occasions in which the hidebound traditions of the Necron military were adapted to better exploit emergent opportunity.  
The Tomb Blade has a curious motion for an aircraft of its design, eschewing the arrow-straight attack vectors of other Jetbikes and fighter craft. The Tomb Blade's reactionless dimensional repulsor engines ensure that gravity, momentum and the other physical forces of normal space-time have little purchase upon its frame, allowing it to be propelled in a way that has no care for the confines of momentum or inertia. As a result, the craft often corkscrews across the battlefield rather than taking a more direct approach, and constantly changes vector and altitude in a manner fit to boggle the enemy's aim. No flesh and blood pilot could ever hope to contend such an anarchic approach without succumbing to blackouts and nausea, but such hazards have no hold over undying machines.

Despite appearances to the contrary, the attack patterns performed by Tomb Blades are strictly controlled by a series of hyper-fractal equations. Indeed, they have to be for the hard-wired Necron Warrior alone would make for a truly dreadful pilot. To compensate for this, attack patterns are entirely pre-programmed and the pilot cannot alter them once in flight, though it can switch between different tactical packages in order to adapt to fresh objectives. The pre-programmed nature of a Tomb Blade's flight means that it is therefore theoretically possible to predict the flight-path it will take, but only a genius-level intellect could divine that there was a pattern at all. Even if said genius could isolate and identify the particular set of equations in use, no conventional targeting computer could ever hope to process the data fast enough to be of any use. Thus, a Tomb Blade is just as difficult a quarry as the most accomplished of all mortal-piloted aircraft, even though its pilot's actual skill is immensely inferior to the best pilots of the other starfaring races.  
Tomb Blades often operate far ahead of the main Necron army, striking at lightly defended positions, supply convoys and other targets of opportunity. Though the planetside variants of the aircraft do not mount the heavier starship-busting weaponry of the starfighter variants, the twin-linked Tesla Carbines and Gauss Blasters can prove just as devastating when employed against advancing infantry. Such is the Tomb Blade's unpredictable advance that the piercing whine of its dimensional repulsors is often the only clue to its approach. At that point, astute enemies dive for any cover they find. The others disintegrate as the air around them explodes in a blaze of unstable and potent viridian energy.

Armament

All Necron Tomb Blades are also programmed with reanimation protocols, which allow them to repair themselves even when critically damaged. Necrodermis, the living metal that makes up Tomb Blades and all other Necron units and vehicles, enables this capacoty due to its remarkable inherent regenerative properties. A Tomb Blade can be armed with any one of the following as their primary weapon:  
Twin-linked Tesla Carbines – Tesla Carbines unleash bolts of living lightning that crackles from foe to foe after hitting its target, charring flesh and melting armour. Tesla bolts feed off the energy released by the destruction they cause, thus making their lightning become more furious with every fresh arc.  
Twin-linked Gauss Blasters – The same weapon as that wielded most commonly by Necron Immortals, Gauss Blasters make for a reliable weapon that is easily capable of laying waste to enemy infantry through the molecular disassembling beams they deliver; reducing flesh, armour and bone to their constituent atoms.  
Particle Beamers – Particle Beamers emit streams of miniscule anti-matter particles that detonate on contact with matter. They are incredibly reliable, needing only enough energy to maintain the containment field that prevents their anti-matter from detonating within the weapon's mechanisms. Particle Beamers are capable of causing small high-strength blasts amongst their target that are capable of wounding all but the hardiest of infantry.  
A Tomb Blade may be also be equipped with any of the following:  
Shadowloom – A Shadowloom is a scarab-sized generator which can project an aura of darkness around the Tomb Blade, providing mobile cover within which the craft can disguise its approach and throw off the aim of enemies.  
Nebuloscope – Nebuloscopes are arcane devices which allow a Tomb Blade pilot to track his prey through seven different dimensions, allowing for far more accurate shots.  
Shield Vanes – Many Tomb Blades are equipped with additional armour panels called Shield Vanes, which increase their craft's durability by a small amount.  
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Monolith

Nothing is more emblematic of Necron implacability than the Monolith. Like all Necron constructs, it is composed of the living metal Necrodermis: a complex semi-sentient alloy that ripples and flows and adapts its structure to repair damage in the blink of an eye. Targeting matrices, motive units, power conduits and command nodes - all are capable of comprehensive and near-instantaneous self-repair. When combined with the vehicle's slab-sided armour plates, this makes the Monolith one of the hardiest vehicles in the Necron's arsenal, and an incredibly daunting opponent for any enemy. Energy beams are absorbed and dispersed, whilst tank-busting missiles simply ricochet off the Monolith's armoured hide, leaving behind minor damage whose repair lies easily within the parameters of the living metal's arcane function. Indeed, the only way to truly halt the advance of a Monolith is to target it with a sustained period of focussed fire. Only by punching through the armoured shell to the vital systems and crew within can there be any hope of ending its threat. Few enemies, however, have the discipline to be so precise under fire, and even they must be swift in their targeting lest they be disintegrated by the Monolith's formidable array of weaponry. However, formidable armour comes at the cost of speed. Due to a Monolith's ponderous bulk, it cannot move at speed, unlike other Necron skimmer vehicles and the more mobile vehicles by the militaries of the other starfaring races.

Even a single Monolith can muster enough firepower to be considered a small army in its own right. The most dramatic of its armaments is the Particle Whip, channelled through a glowing focus power crystal atop the vehicle. A single ear-splitting discharge from the Particle Whip is enough to reduce tanks to smouldering wrecks and infantry to molecular vapour. Any enemies lucky enough to have survived will then have to run the gauntlet of the Monolith's Gauss Flux Arcs. These automated defence arrays rake the area around the Monolith in pre-programmed execution patterns, finely tuned to predict the panicked motions of foes under fire.  
Yet the Monolith's greatest and most fearsome weapon is its Eternity Gate. This shimmering energy field is nothing less than a captive wormhole, bound into the very heart of the Monolith. With a simple mental command, the Monolith's crew can transform the Eternity Gate into a portal of exile, and those that fail to resist its pull are sucked out of reality entirely; banished forever to a temporal prison from which there can be no escape. Alternatively, the Monolith's crew can use the Eternity Gate as a form of dimensional corridor, pulling squads of Necrons from elsewhere on the battlefield, orbiting starships or even far-distant Tomb Worlds and deploying them to the Monolith's location. So is the Monolith rightly known as a forerunner to disaster; for where a Monolith teleports onto a planet's surface, an invading Necron army is rarely far behind…

Necron Monoliths are primarily deployed to act as a central anchor for Necron battlelines, mainly due to their abilities to quickly affect repairs upon those Necrons which teleport through its eternity gate, their immense firepower and near-impenetrable armour. Monoliths themselves are often deployed onto a battlefield through teleportation methods, either from within a Necron tomb or from orbiting Necron fleets. However, Monoliths can also descend safely from great heights using their sophisticated anti-gravitic engines. Monoliths have also been observed to be carried by the even larger constructs known as Megaliths; vast mobile starfaring Necron fortresses which integrate detachable Monoliths to better deploy them as support during a planetary assault.

Known Monolith FormationsEdit

Monolith Phalanx - Armed with technology perfected before Mankind ever rose from primordial soup, the Necrons utilise weapons and strategies incomprehensible to all other intelligent races. Though the Warp is anathema to the metallic legions of the former Necrontyr, there are many other dimensions they can use of which other races are wholly ignorant. Using their mastering of space-time manipulation, the Necrons were able to create worlds within worlds, stable null fields and all manner of other exotic battlefield conditions. This is most evident in the use of Monoliths in a formation the Ordo Xenos has dubbed the Monolith Phalanx. In this particular configuration, at certain pivotal places in the four-dimensional universe, the presence of three or more Monoliths within effective range of each other can emit a frequency waveform that distorts space-time and creates a powerful energy field known as a nodal grid. As witnessed during the Rincairn's Flow Massacre, two or more Monoliths in a Monolith Phalanx near each other can create a Nightshroud barrier between them. Enemy shots which pass through this barrier lose energy and strength whilst the Nightshroud also obscures those Necrons behind it. A Nightshroud is also anathema to psykers and as such they cannot cast their psychic powers through it. However, if three or more Monoliths in a Monolith Phalanx are close enough, they can project a nodal grid, which bolsters Necrons within the grid itself by enhancing their already potent resistance to damage, making them all but impossible to destroy. A nodal grid also acts as a null field upon the battlefield, completely draining the energies of psykers within its range. All Necron Monoliths in a Monolith Phalanx formation will always teleport onto the battlefield, their unheralded arrival spelling doom to their enemies.

Doomsday Phalanx - To date, there have been no confirmed records of Necrons fielding super-heavy vehicles comparable with the likes of the Imperial Baneblade and the Eldar Scorpion. Instead, the Necrons seem to favour the deployment of specialised Monolith formations whose combined might is greater than the sum of their parts. Such is the case with the Doomsday Phalanx. First sighted during the Damnos Incident, but since reported in many other conflicts, the Doomsday Phalanx holds at its core a heavily modified Monolith named a Doomsday Monolith by the Imperium that is protected by a phase shift energy generator of unknown design, and has been noted to be capable of focusing awesome destructive energies into devastating viridian beams which can be fired from its Gauss Obliterator. Worse still, a "Doomsday Monolith" is inevitably accompanied by several lesser constructions whose eldritch power it can siphon towards its own cataclysmic ends.  
Baleful Necropolis – A complex known as a Baleful Necropolis is the most potent of all a Tomb World's defences. These colossal hovering fortresses are more than mere battle stations, but the very buildings of a Necron Tomb, raised into the sky to rain destruction upon the luckless invaders. To hold so many massive structures aloft requires a power source beyond the ken of lesser races, yet a single Tesseract Vault is equal to the task. These multi-phasic prisons not only cage the most powerful C'tan Shards, but also leech and redirect their essence to fuel other arcane devices. Such is the sheer spectacle and destructive fury of a Baleful Necropolis' cyclopean assault that the ranking Nemesor will also inevitably commandeer it to spear his own phalanxes. A Baleful Necropolis formation usually consists of a single Tesseract Vault that powers eight Monoliths around it. When operating in such a manner, the Tesseract Vault is able to harness a specialised Annihilator Beam weapon, and can draw power from nearby Monoliths to enhance the beam's range. The Tesseract Vault also projects a Supreme Shield Matrix around itself, protecting nearby Monoliths and itself with an energy field  
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Doomsday Monolith

Nothing is more emblematic of Necron implacability than a Doomsday Monolith. Like all Necron constructs, it is composed of the living metal Necrodermis: a complex semi-sentient alloy that ripples and flows and adapts its structure to repair damage in the blink of an eye. Targeting matrices, motive units, power conduits and command nodes - all are capable of comprehensive and near-instantaneous self-repair. When combined with the vehicle's slab-sided armour plates and powerful Phase Shift Generator, this makes the Doomsday Monolith one of the hardiest vehicles in the Necron's arsenal, and an incredibly daunting opponent for any enemy. Energy beams are absorbed and dispersed, whilst tank-busting missiles simply ricochet off the Doomsday Monolith's armoured hide, leaving behind minor damage whose repair lies easily within the parameters of the living metal's arcane function. Indeed, the only way to truly halt the advance of a Monolith is to target it with a sustained period of focussed fire. Only by punching through the armoured shell to the vital systems and crew within can there be any hope of ending its threat. Few enemies, however, have the discipline to be so precise under fire, and even they must be swift in their targeting lest they be disintegrated by the Doomsday Monolith's devastating array of weaponry. However, formidable armour comes at the cost of speed. Due to a Doomsday Monolith's ponderous bulk, it cannot move at speed, unlike other Necron skimmer vehicles and the more mobile vehicles by the militaries of the other star-faring races.  
Even a single Doomsday Monolith can muster enough firepower to be considered an army in its own right. The most dramatic of its armaments is the Gauss Obliterator, channelled through a glowing focus power crystal atop the vehicle. A single ear-splitting discharge from a Gauss Obliterator is enough to reduce whole battlefields of armies to nothing but molecular vapour. Any enemies lucky enough to have survived will then have to run the gauntlet of the Doomsday Monolith's Gauss Flux Arcs. These automated defence arrays rake the area around the Doomsday Monolith in pre-programmed execution patterns, finely tuned to predict the panicked motions of foes under fire.

Like standard Monoliths, a Doomsday Monolith also features an Eternity Gate. This shimmering energy field is nothing less than a captive, stable Einstein-Rosen wormhole, bound into the very heart of the Doomsday Monolith. With a simple mental command, the Doomsday Monolith's undying Necron crew can transform the Eternity Gate into a portal of exile, and those that fail to resist its pull are sucked out of reality entirely; banished forever to a temporal prison from which there can be no escape. Alternatively, the Doomsday Monolith's crew can use the Eternity Gate as a form of dimensional corridor, pulling squads of Necrons from elsewhere on the battlefield, orbiting starships or even far-distant Tomb Worlds and deploying them to the Doomsday Monolith's location. So is the Doomsday Monolith rightly known as a forerunner to disaster; for where a Doomsday Monolith teleports onto a planet's surface, an invading Necron army is rarely far behind…

Necron Doomsday Monoliths are primarily deployed to act as a central anchor for Necron battlelines, mainly due to their abilities to quickly affect repairs upon those Necrons which teleport through its Eternity Gate, their potent firepower and near-impenetrable armour. Doomsday Monoliths themselves are often deployed onto a battlefield through teleportation methods, either from within a Necron tomb or from orbiting Necron fleets. However, Doomsday Monoliths can also descend safely from great heights using their sophisticated anti-gravitic engines.

A Necron Doomsday Monolith is armed with a large power matrix crystal mounted atop its pyramidal form. This crystal can focus its alien energies to unleash devastating arcs of anti-matter lightning. However, unlike standard Monoliths which can project these energies in the form of a Particle Whip, a Doomsday Monolith can discharge its immense energies in the form of a Gauss Obliterator. The beams themselves are capable of outright destroying large swathes of infantry and vehicles alike. However, a Doomsday Monolith is inevitably accompanied by several other Monoliths, whose eldritch power it can siphon towards its own cataclysmic ends. This additional energy is drained from the power matrices of other Monoliths, and is discharged from the Gauss Obliterator in the form of additional blasts. This increases the weapon's rate of fire and all but ensures the doom of entire enemy armies. Doomsday Monoliths are also armed with four Gauss Flux Arc projectors positioned around its hull. Effectively batteries of three Gauss Flayers each, these weapons are often used to scour the immediate area around the Doomsday Monolith clean of enemies. Finally, all Necron Monoliths feature a powerful wormhole portal known as an Eternity Gate which is built into their forward hull face. The Eternity Gate can act as both a dimensional portal to teleport Necrons through from other worlds or elsewhere on the battlefield, as well as significantly aiding their repair processes whilst they do so. It can also serve as another offensive weapon, a portal of exile which can suck in and banish enemies nearby into oblivion. A Doomsday Monolith is also equipped with a Phase Shift Generator, which functions differently to the Phase Shift Generator also used by a Gauss Pylon. This variant of the technology affords the Doomsday Monolith additional defensive protection by placing the mobile fortress slightly out of phase with the normal flow of space-time, increasing its survivability, though not that of other nearby Necron units.  
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Tesseract Ark

A Tesseract Ark is an arcane Necron war machine first encountered by the Imperium of Man during the Orphean War of the late 41st Millennium. Imperial observation of this war machine classifies it as a mobile ordnance carrier/siege unit of potent firepower capacity, and Auspex and Cogitator analysis reveals the likelihood that the vehicle contains a force containment vessel whose operation is considered physically impossible by the writ of the Imperium and the Adeptus Mechanicus.  
From this "Tesseract Singularity Chamber" the Tesseract Ark can siphon and unleash storm-winds of particle energy, the stolen fire of suns, and shatter the earth and crumble bastions alike with seismic tremors. A Tesseract Ark also exhibits extreme durability with maximal resistance to projectile and energy weapons fire. This protection is attributed to non-Euclidean function Necron material technology in combination with terradyne-magnitude controlled gravity distortions emanating from vehicle; and unbeknownst to the Imperium, this effect is also purposefully induced from the contained singularity to better protect the Ark from harm. Imperial tacticians have learned that when encountered, a Tesseract Ark is engaged at long-range with saturation ordnance/airstrikes or at medium range with super-heavy battlefield assets. If forced into close-range engagements, the fatality level of assaulting Imperial troops is likely to be extreme and victory is not guaranteed regardless of the attacker's strategic advantage.

Several Tesseract Arks were used by the nobility of the Necron Maynarkh Dynasty during the battles that consumed the sector capital world of Amarah in the Orpheus Sector of Segmentum Tempestus. The Tesseract Ark is one of the rarer Necron war machines encountered by Mankind, for its manufacture is the purview of only the most adept of the Necron Crypteks. It is also one of the most powerful, containing at its heart a contained singularity torn from the core of a dying star. The Tesseract Ark can manipulate this singularity for a variety of battlefield effects, often with deadly consequences for the enemy. A Tesseract Ark's open and skeletal form is held aloft by a sophisticated anti-gravitic engine, which allows it to hover over any intervening terrain that might otherwise hamper its movement. Its powerful reaction thrusters drive it at a speed that belies its bulk, whilst the sensor-node mounted above the crewman's seat allows it to better find its cowering foes.  
Contents  
Armament

All Tesseract Arks are armed and equipped as follows:  
Tesseract Singularity Chamber – A Tesseract Ark is built around a shielded Tesseract containment device known as a Tesseract Singularity Chamber. This holds within itself a sliver of a dying star suspended within a stasis field. A Tesseract Ark is able to siphon off this singularity's terribly destructive energies using the power of Necron scientific mastery, and is able to project its power through its forward projector array as a battlefield weapon. A Tesseract Singularity Chamber provides the vehicle with a number of potent effects, such as projecting a containment field around the Ark that is capable of deflecting even the heaviest of incoming weapons fire, and causing a gravitational flux in the nearby area which forces assaulting enemies into extreme and sometimes fatal gravitic fields as they try to catch their elusive prey. However, it is when the singularity's energies are fired through the nose-mounted projector array that it is most devastating. When harnessed, it can be fired in three different modes: a solar fire which generates long-range blasts of scouring plasma with a high rate of fire; a close-range particle hurricane that tears into everything directly in front of the vehicle; or a seismic lash that causes powerful quakes and earth tremors in a line extending a significant distance away from the vehicle, often with deadly effects for any vehicles in the quake's path. This mode also causes surviving enemy infantry to be slowed as they attempt to move across the quaking surface of the ground. Perhaps the only drawback of such a powerful weapon is that if the containment chamber is breached, it detonates in a cataclysmic explosion with devastating effects on everything and everyone nearby.  
Necrodermis – The armour of a Tesseract Ark is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that comprises the bodies of the Necrons themselves, as well as all of their artefacts and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself. This means that the Ark can regenerate the parts of its hull, reknit its metal plates, and reconnect any circuits and other delicate systems required to bring its weapons online again.  
Quantum Shielding – Tesseract Arks are also protected by a layer of Quantum Shielding which exists out of phase from the rest of the vehicle until the moment of deflection. It can deflect the first shot that would otherwise penetrate the Ark's armour, after which it cannot be used again for some time.  
Secondary Weapon Systems  
The secondary weapon systems of the Tesseract Ark can include one of the following:  
2 Tesla Cannons – Tesla Cannons unleash bolts of living lightning that crackle from foe to foe after hitting their target, charring flesh and melting armour. Tesla bolts feed off the energy released by the destruction they cause, thus making their lightning become more furious with every fresh arc.  
2 Gauss Cannons – The same weapon as that often wielded by Necron Destroyers, Gauss Cannons make for a reliable weapon that is easily capable of laying waste to enemy infantry through the molecular disassembling beams they deliver, reducing flesh, armour and bone to their constituent atoms.  
2 Particle Beamers – Particle Beamers emit streams of miniscule anti-matter particles that detonate on contact with matter. They are incredibly reliable, needing only enough energy to maintain the containment field that prevents their anti-matter from detonating within the weapon's mechanisms. Particle Beamers are capable of causing small high-strength blasts amongst their target that are capable of wounding all but the hardiest of infantry.  
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Doomsday Ark

Whatever personal eccentricities they might individually favour, all Necron Overlords hold an absolute belief in victory through overwhelming firepower. Some of the Necron's bitterest enemies have claimed this is simply due to the Necron's android forms being somewhat less than impressive in swirling melee. However, the truth of the matter is that as flesh and as machine, the Necrons have ever won their wars through the unrelenting application of superior technology. As such victories are invariably won at a distance, all Necron battle codicils emphasise ranged superiority. Nowhere is this more evident in the Doomsday Ark; amongst the most feared of all weapons In the Necron arsenal.  
The Doomsday Ark shares a basic appearance with the Necron Ghost Ark, but whereas the latter's primary purpose is to transport and effect repairs for the Necron soldiery, the Doomsday Ark exists only to bring ruination on the Necrons' enemies. In aspect, a Doomsday Ark appears deceptively fragile; its structure is skeletal and lacks the armour plates of more conventional battle vehicles. But to obsess on this apparent fragility is to overlook a Doomsday Ark's true purpose and potential. It is not a battle tank intended to sit in the midst of a battle line, to give and receive punishing blows. Rather, the Doomsday Ark is nothing less than an enormous self-propelled Doomsday Cannon - a weapon that can win a battle with a single shot. As overwhelming as the Doomsday Cannon is, those who face a Doomsday Ark may find small relief in the fact that its weapon draws on the same power reserves as the repulsor engines of the vehicle. Any systems not directly pertaining to the Doomsday Ark's main armament are part of the motive units that power its anti-gravitic engines and propel it into position, or the shielding arrays that give it some measure of protection from enemy fire. Each of these secondary systems draws power from the same source as the Doomsday Cannon, and much of the pilot's concentration is taken up ensuring that the energy distribution is appropriate to the tasks at hand. As a result, a Doomsday Cannon is somewhat less effective when fired during or immediately following any significant movement of the craft. Then again, even a low power blast from a Doomsday Cannon rival the most hallowed of Adeptus Astartes Plasma Cannons for destructive potential.

Unlike other vehicles, a Doomsday Ark relies little on either evasion or resilience for survival. Rather, its pilot's entire defensive strategy is one of pre-emptive strike - after all, enemies are infinitely less threatening once reduced to an expanding cloud of superheated energy. Thus does anything less than an overwhelming frontal assault on a Doomsday Ark inevitably end in disaster; the attacks vaporised long before their own weapons come into range. Nor do attempts to outflank serve any better. While those experienced in combating heavy vehicles may think to attack from the rear, typically the most vulnerable approach for Imperial and Xenos vehicles, this tactic is only of minor effectiveness against a Doomsday Ark. Due to its living metal hull and extra-dimensional armour, a Doomsday Ark is in fact no more vulnerable to damage from the rear than from any other direction. While it is true that the rear is the one facing of a Doomsday Ark not brandishing weaponry, a mere few degrees of pivoting by the vehicle's pilot brings a broadside of linked Gauss Flayers to bear, ending all but the most determined assault. Though ponderous in advancing, a Doomsday Ark can be brought around to a new heading with surprising speed; emerald energy beams lancing out to slaughter its would-be attackers. Further, all Nemesors realise the potential of a Doomsday Cannon to turn the tide of battle, meaning that the weapon is almost invariably defended by Necron Warriors or even more potent Necron units.

Armament  
A Doomsday Ark is armed and equipped with the following:  
Doomsday Cannon - The Doomsday Cannon is a wonder of super-technology, easily eclipsing the primitive directed energy weapons of the Imperium of Man. Even fired at low power the Doomsday Cannon is a fearsome weapon; when firing at full effect, its searing energy beams burn many times hotter than more conventional Plasma Weapons. Infantry squads caught in the Doomsday Cannon's fury are obliterated instantly whilst armoured vehicles are reduced to glowing slag. In the face of a shot from a Doomsday Cannon, nothing less than a Titan's Void Shields can hope to offer anything more than a fool's hope of protection. Because of the energy constraints that are inherent in the design of a Doomsday Ark, a Doomsday Cannon can only be fired at full power whilst the vehicle is not moving. If the vehicle does move, then the pilots must redistribute power to the dimensional repulsor motive units that keep the Doomsday Ark aloft and thus forcing the Doomsday Cannon to receive less power and fire a weaker, though still powerful, blast.  
Two Gauss Flayer Arrays – Doomsday Arks are each armed with two separate arrays of five Gauss Flayers - one located along each flank - enabling it to "broadside" enemy units on its side. These two arrays enable the Doomsday Ark to repel any enemy assaulters who manage to flank it, as well as those approaching from the rear due to the Ark's swift turning speeds.  
Necrodermis - The armour of Doomsday Arks is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that makes up all Necron bodies and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself; whether this is the regeneration of parts of its hull, the reknitting of metal plates, and the reconnection of circuits and other delicate systems to bring its weapon online again.  
Quantum Shielding - Doomsday Arks are also protected by a layer of Quantum Shielding which exists out of phase from the rest of the vehicle until the moment of deflection. It can deflect the first shot that would otherwise penetrate the Ark's armour, after which it cannot be used again for some time.  
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Triarch Stalker

While the Triarch Stalker can mount a wide array of anti-infantry and anti-armour weaponry, it is most commonly employed as a dedicated tank-hunter that roams far ahead of the main army. When a Triarch Stalker advances, it does so with a speed and surety that belies its jerking gait. Indeed, it can cover all manner of terrain with a deftness and precision seldom found on the walkers of less advanced races. Able to navigate dense jungle and mountainous terrain as swiftly and sure-footedly as open plains, Triarch Stalkers can easily outmanoeuvre more cumbersome tracked vehicles, the better to unleash their withering firepower against the thinner armour presented by the target's flanks and rear. As such attacks are much more effective when the enemy is taken unawares, Triarch Stalkers rarely indulge in sustained fusillades. Instead, they prefer to employ hit-and-run tactics; launching one or two salvoes of fire and then skittering away onto the shadows before the enemy can react to their threat.  
On those occasions when a Triarch Stalker is deployed in the heart of Necron battle lines, its main function is to provide close fire support, and it is typically equipped with a Heat Ray - a multi-purpose fusion weapon. If an enemy tank stalls the main Necron attack, one focussed blast from the Triarch Stalker's Heat Ray is sufficient to end the threat. Similarly, if dug-in enemy infantry is hampering the Necron advance, a Triarch Stalker can break the deadlock. The pilot simply sets the Heat Ray to dispersed beam, and sends clouds of scorching plasma swirling into every crevasse to boil the enemy alive.

Should the Triarch Stalker's firepower prove insufficient for the task at hand, it can instruct nearby Necron phalanxes to add their firepower to its own, and even transmit targeting data to ensure these augmentative volleys are as accurate as possible. Only the toughest and bravest of foes can withstand such a barrage - others are driven screaming from the battlefield, or mown down by the pinpoint salvoes.

Such a difference does a Triarch Stalker's presence make that habitual foes of the Necrons have learnt to prioritise its destruction. To guard against this, each Triarch Stalker is protected by layered Quantum Shielding. Though a determined assault can still breach these potent energy fields, it normally buys the Triarch Stalker enough time to withdraw. With their durability thus enhanced. Triarch Stalkers are increasingly deployed at the head of vanguard forces to bear the brunt of the enemy's counterattack until the main body of the Necron army reaches the battle zone. They are as much of a symbol of the Triarch's power as they are deadly warmachines in battle.

Armament  
Triarch Stalkers are primarily armed with a main weapon located under its main hull. This weapon can be any one of the following:  
Heat Ray - A Heat Ray is a weapon that can either be fired in a focused beam, which can devastate armour with fusion-based Melta energy, or in a dispersed beam which acts like a Flamer and can burn enemy troops out of cover.  
Particle Shredder - A Particle Shredder functions by emitting a stream of miniscule anti-matter particles that detonate explosively on contact with matter. Particle Weapons are incredibly reliable, needing only enough energy to maintain the containment field that prevents the anti-matter from detonating within the weapon's mechanism, which is composed of normal matter. Blasts from a Particle Shredder can cover a wide area, and are effective against both infantry and light vehicles.  
Twin-linked Heavy Gauss Cannons – Heavy Gauss Cannons are devastating weapons best used to penetrate heavy armour. They are the same weapon as that mounted on a Heavy Destroyer.  
All Triarch Stalkers are also equipped with the following:  
Targeting Relay - Triarch Stalkers are equipped with advanced targeting relay systems to transmit targeting data and enhance the accuracy of other Necron units shooting at the same target as the stalker.  
Necrodermis - The armour of Triarch Stalkers is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that makes up all Necron bodies and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself; whether this is the regeneration of parts of its hull, the reknitting of metal plates, and the reconnection of circuits and other delicate systems to bring its weapons online again. Many a foe has celebrated prematurely after landing a solid hit on an Triach Stalker only for it return its lethal firepower after a few moments of repair.  
Quantum Shielding - Triarch Stalkers are protected by a layer of Quantum Shielding which exists only at the moment of deflection. It can deflect the first shot that would otherwise penetrate the Triarch Stalkers armour, after which it cannot be used again for some time.  
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Annihilation Barge

Not so much a tank but a mobile weapons platform, a Necron Annihilation Barge is so-named for its extreme destructive potential. Whilst slow moving and ponderous, mobility is not its purpose. It excels instead in its aptly named role - annihilation. Using its devastating Tesla lightning weapons, an Annihilation Barge can eradicate entire formations of enemy infantry in mere moments; its bolts of electricity incinerating target after target. An Annihilation Barge is crescent shaped in appearance, with is main payload mounted atop its keel. Its open form is kept aloft by a sophisticated anti-gravitic engine, which allows the Barge to hover over any intervening terrain that might otherwise hamper its movement.  
It is difficult to imagine a vehicle more unlike those manufactured by the Imperium of Man. In many ways, an Annihilation Barge bears even less resemblance to an Imperial tank than the similar anti-gravitic vehicles of the Tau Empire. Like the Necrons themselves, the Annihilation Barge is merely a skeletal frame for supporting its weapons. While it may appear to lack armour, this is not quite true. The bulk of its protection takes the form of Quantum Shielding, which only exists at the moment of impact of enemy projectiles; thus leaving the vehicle light and manoeuvrable.

Role  
Annihalation Barge  
A Necron Annihilation Barge armed with twin-linked Tesla Destructors and an underslung Tesla Cannon  
Shas'o'KaisAdded by Shas'o'Kais  
Annihilation Barges are the Necrons' favoured anti-infantry support platforms. Each is armed with a twin-linked pair of Tesla Destructors - enormous energy cannons that fire ferocious arcs of eldritch lightning. In their usual configurations, Annihilation Barges are set in fixed positions in the lowest and deepest sanctums of a Necron tomb. Should an intruder manage to circumvent the existing layers of traps, service robots and prowling Necron Warriors, he will then have to pass beneath the concealed alcove emplacements above cyclopean doorways in which the Annihilation Barges lie. An acrid discharge of emerald lightning later, and the interloper is naught but dust upon the tomb's stale breezes. Any collateral damage from the discharge of its weapons within the tomb structure can be repaired in short order by robotic Canoptek Spyders and Canoptek Wraiths, and is well worth the annihilation of any intruders. When a Necron Overlord goes to war, the ancient repulsor sleds which keep Annihilation Barges aloft are coaxed back into life so that the vehicles' powerful firepower may be added to a Tomb World's army.  
In battle, Annihilation Barges lack the speed commonly associated with anti-gravitic vehicles and seldom swift enough to keep pace with even the ponderous advance of a Necron army. Indeed, their ponderous movement is more akin to the slow progress of Imperial tanks. As such, they will often be deployed as defences for strategic locations instead. From there, they can counter enemy scout elements without facing the risk of being swept aside by a concerted enemy attack. Not only does this deployment render valuable sectors of the battlefield immune to all but the most determined of enemy assaults, it also ensures that the Annihilation Barges themselves are guaranteed to find bloody purpose. Additionally, most Necron Overlords will often task a squad of Immortals and Necron Warriors to act as guards, so as to better protect the valuable Annihilation Barges. Such a partnership can prove advantageous for both parties - the Annihilation Barge gains a screen of allies to drive back incoming assaults, whilst its bodyguards benefit from the vehicle's immense firepower.

Nowhere are Annihilation Barges more commonly deployed than on the northern frontier planets of the Akannazad Dynasty. These Tomb Worlds are under perpetual assault from the Orks of Charadon, to whom the technology-rich and high ordered Necron planets present an irresistible lure - both in terms of plunder and anarchic potential. Without the support of Annihilation Barges, many of these worlds would have long ago been overrun. Few other weapons can wreak as efficient havoc amongst an oncoming Ork horde. Primary blasts can shred the the armour from Trukks and Looted Wagons, while the wildly arcing lightning that follows will incinerate any Ork Boyz unfortunate enough to be advancing alongside.

All Annihilation Barges are crewed by a pair of hard-wired Necron Immortals with are especially suited to their role. This is due to unique systems which allow for the direct interfacing between them and the vehicle. This connection surpasses that of even the most advanced MIUs available to the Imperium, and in many ways there is no meaningful distinction between the craft and its crew.

Armament  
Twin-linked Tesla Destructor - An Annihilation Barge's primary weapon is its Tesla Destructor, which is mainly an anti-personnel weapon though only the most heavily armed tanks can risk its wrath with utter impunity. The Tesla Destructor employs much the same lightning-arc technology as found in the smaller Tesla Cannons and Tesla Carbines. Its energy discharges of crackling lightning can wreak terrible harm on living targets; searing their flesh, melting their armour and boiling their blood. Furthermore, the Tesla bolts fired feed off energy released by the destruction they cause, often meaning that the lightning becomes more ferocious with each arc. So powerful are the blasts from a Tesla Destructor, and such is its shocking rapidity of fire, that the lightning fired is capable of leaping from target to target before they are finally grounded; leaving a trail of smouldering carnage across a broad swathe of the battlefield behind them.  
Tesla Cannon - Annihilation Barges commonly mount an underslung Tesla Cannon as a backup secondary weapon which, whilst less potent than the larger Tesla Destructor, is still capable of vaporising significant amounts of infantry.  
Necrodermis - The armour of Annihilation Barges is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that makes up all Necron bodies and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself; whether this is the regeneration of parts of its hull, the reknitting of metal plates, and the reconnection of circuits and other delicate systems to bring its weapon online again. Many a foe has celebrated prematurely after landing a solid hit on an Annihilation Barge only for it to exemplify its name later after a few moments or repair.  
Quantum Shielding - Annihilation Barges are also protected by a layer of Quantum Shielding which exists out of phase from the rest of the vehicle until the moment of deflection. It can deflect the first shot that would otherwise penetrate the Barge's armour, after which it cannot be used again for some time.  
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Annihilation Barge

Not so much a tank but a mobile weapons platform, a Necron Annihilation Barge is so-named for its extreme destructive potential. Whilst slow moving and ponderous, mobility is not its purpose. It excels instead in its aptly named role - annihilation. Using its devastating Tesla lightning weapons, an Annihilation Barge can eradicate entire formations of enemy infantry in mere moments; its bolts of electricity incinerating target after target. An Annihilation Barge is crescent shaped in appearance, with is main payload mounted atop its keel. Its open form is kept aloft by a sophisticated anti-gravitic engine, which allows the Barge to hover over any intervening terrain that might otherwise hamper its movement.  
It is difficult to imagine a vehicle more unlike those manufactured by the Imperium of Man. In many ways, an Annihilation Barge bears even less resemblance to an Imperial tank than the similar anti-gravitic vehicles of the Tau Empire. Like the Necrons themselves, the Annihilation Barge is merely a skeletal frame for supporting its weapons. While it may appear to lack armour, this is not quite true. The bulk of its protection takes the form of Quantum Shielding, which only exists at the moment of impact of enemy projectiles; thus leaving the vehicle light and manoeuvrable.

Role

Annihilation Barges are the Necrons' favoured anti-infantry support platforms. Each is armed with a twin-linked pair of Tesla Destructors - enormous energy cannons that fire ferocious arcs of eldritch lightning. In their usual configurations, Annihilation Barges are set in fixed positions in the lowest and deepest sanctums of a Necron tomb. Should an intruder manage to circumvent the existing layers of traps, service robots and prowling Necron Warriors, he will then have to pass beneath the concealed alcove emplacements above cyclopean doorways in which the Annihilation Barges lie. An acrid discharge of emerald lightning later, and the interloper is naught but dust upon the tomb's stale breezes. Any collateral damage from the discharge of its weapons within the tomb structure can be repaired in short order by robotic Canoptek Spyders and Canoptek Wraiths, and is well worth the annihilation of any intruders. When a Necron Overlord goes to war, the ancient repulsor sleds which keep Annihilation Barges aloft are coaxed back into life so that the vehicles' powerful firepower may be added to a Tomb World's army.  
In battle, Annihilation Barges lack the speed commonly associated with anti-gravitic vehicles and seldom swift enough to keep pace with even the ponderous advance of a Necron army. Indeed, their ponderous movement is more akin to the slow progress of Imperial tanks. As such, they will often be deployed as defences for strategic locations instead. From there, they can counter enemy scout elements without facing the risk of being swept aside by a concerted enemy attack. Not only does this deployment render valuable sectors of the battlefield immune to all but the most determined of enemy assaults, it also ensures that the Annihilation Barges themselves are guaranteed to find bloody purpose. Additionally, most Necron Overlords will often task a squad of Immortals and Necron Warriors to act as guards, so as to better protect the valuable Annihilation Barges. Such a partnership can prove advantageous for both parties - the Annihilation Barge gains a screen of allies to drive back incoming assaults, whilst its bodyguards benefit from the vehicle's immense firepower.

Nowhere are Annihilation Barges more commonly deployed than on the northern frontier planets of the Akannazad Dynasty. These Tomb Worlds are under perpetual assault from the Orks of Charadon, to whom the technology-rich and high ordered Necron planets present an irresistible lure - both in terms of plunder and anarchic potential. Without the support of Annihilation Barges, many of these worlds would have long ago been overrun. Few other weapons can wreak as efficient havoc amongst an oncoming Ork horde. Primary blasts can shred the the armour from Trukks and Looted Wagons, while the wildly arcing lightning that follows will incinerate any Ork Boyz unfortunate enough to be advancing alongside.

All Annihilation Barges are crewed by a pair of hard-wired Necron Immortals with are especially suited to their role. This is due to unique systems which allow for the direct interfacing between them and the vehicle. This connection surpasses that of even the most advanced MIUs available to the Imperium, and in many ways there is no meaningful distinction between the craft and its crew.

Armament  
Twin-linked Tesla Destructor - An Annihilation Barge's primary weapon is its Tesla Destructor, which is mainly an anti-personnel weapon though only the most heavily armed tanks can risk its wrath with utter impunity. The Tesla Destructor employs much the same lightning-arc technology as found in the smaller Tesla Cannons and Tesla Carbines. Its energy discharges of crackling lightning can wreak terrible harm on living targets; searing their flesh, melting their armour and boiling their blood. Furthermore, the Tesla bolts fired feed off energy released by the destruction they cause, often meaning that the lightning becomes more ferocious with each arc. So powerful are the blasts from a Tesla Destructor, and such is its shocking rapidity of fire, that the lightning fired is capable of leaping from target to target before they are finally grounded; leaving a trail of smouldering carnage across a broad swathe of the battlefield behind them.  
Tesla Cannon - Annihilation Barges commonly mount an underslung Tesla Cannon as a backup secondary weapon which, whilst less potent than the larger Tesla Destructor, is still capable of vaporising significant amounts of infantry.  
Necrodermis - The armour of Annihilation Barges is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that makes up all Necron bodies and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself; whether this is the regeneration of parts of its hull, the reknitting of metal plates, and the reconnection of circuits and other delicate systems to bring its weapon online again. Many a foe has celebrated prematurely after landing a solid hit on an Annihilation Barge only for it to exemplify its name later after a few moments or repair.  
Quantum Shielding - Annihilation Barges are also protected by a layer of Quantum Shielding which exists out of phase from the rest of the vehicle until the moment of deflection. It can deflect the first shot that would otherwise penetrate the Barge's armour, after which it cannot be used again for some time.  
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Catacomb Command Barge

A Catacomb Command Barge, whilst similar in appearance and structure to an Annihilation Barge, serves a very different purpose for Necron forces; whereas Annihilation Barges bring ruination upon the living from a distance, Catacomb Command Barges close on the foe as quickly as possible so that the embarked Necron Overlord can strike at his enemies with sword and scythe. Catacomb Command Barges serve solely as conveyors for Necron nobility, particularly those with a propensity for melee combat. Catacomb Command Barges are far swifter than Annihilation Barges, so that the barge's master might be conducted to wherever he is most needed, and to ensure that no foes escape their intended fate. It is a near-universal truth that the nobility of every thinking race seek to showcase their status, and the Necrons are no exception.

Role  
The most aggressive Necron Overlords fight not on foot, but rather from the deck of a Catacomb Command Barge - an armoured, dimensional repulsor-driven skimmercraft. In ancient times, this craft would hover high above the army, so that all Necrontyr could see their Overlord's presence and take heart from it. Catacomb Command Barges are first and foremost a way to show how (literally) far above their servants and enemies a Necron Lord or Overlord is. For those Lords who prefer to keep their skeletal hands clean, a Command Barge can hover above the battlefield, allowing them to survey the combat and issue orders while avoiding the swirl of melee and all but the most dedicated of ranged attackers. Most Overlords can no longer directly inspire the soldiery as they once could though - few Necrons still possess the capacity for such emotions - but technology has filled the void.  
A Catacomb Command Barge is nothing less than a giant carrier wave generator, equipped with sophisticated sub-frequency broadcasting equipment, omnivoxes, and hyperspace transmitters, that allows an Overlord to instantaneously issue commands to nearby troops, Necron forces in the local vicinity and even in orbit, regardless of conditions or interference. Even in the present age, when inspiration has little to do with visibility, an Overlord will often seek a raised vantage point from the battle's start, so he might better define the enemy's intended strategy before it unfolds.

The Catacomb Command Barge itself is a swift and manoeuvrable craft - it has to be, for an Overlord must keep pace with the battle at all times. Though the Overlord is undeniably the Command Barge's master, he does not operate its controls. Such work is beneath a member of the nobility, and especially below those of such esteemed rank as he. Rather, the skimmercraft's controls are the charge of two slaved Necron crew who act as both pilots and as gunners for its underslung weaponry. These Necrons are hard-wired to the Overlord through the craft's mechanism and can react to his instructions in a fraction of a second. This does not, however, prevent the Overlord from issuing verbal commands - old habits die hard in old soldiers. Indeed, it is often possible to hear the Overlord's authoritative instructions or angry epithets echoing across a battlefield as he drives his crew hard up to, and sometimes beyond, their limits. Whether this is out of vanity, nostalgia for the time of flesh, or a damaged engrammatic synthapse, depends on the individual Lord.  
Service aboard a Command Barge is considered to be a great honour, though it is not without its risks. Not only does it guarantee a place in the very heart of battle, but if the Overlord is slain - or sometimes even if he is merely put to inconvenience through mechanical failure - retribution falls upon his pilots. However, an Overlord can perform a symbiotic repair if the vehicle has its weapon or motor drives destroyed. This comes at a physical cost though for the Overlord himself, as he must give up a portion of his personal energy to repair the barge.

With his barge's systems attended to by his minions, the Overlord is free to wield his Warscythe against his foe, for a Catacomb Command Barge allows a Necron royal to swiftly engage his foes in close combat. Sometimes he will disembark before doing so, preferring to face his chosen foe with feet braced firmly on solid ground. At other times, however, the Overlord will remain seated on his Catacomb Command Barge; choosing instead to strike at the foe with great sweeps of his blade as his barge screams past. While Catacomb Command Barges are typically employed in large-scale engagements, they might also be utilised whenever a Necron noble requires speed and manoeuvrability to accomplish his goals. The barge's transmitters can be useful for a Lord who wishes to conduct a more delicate operation from a safe distance. For a Lord taking a more personal involvement, the Barge's speed ensures that no fleeing witnesses escape with their lives. The last sight of many an enemy has been that of a Catacomb Command Barge swooping out of the sky with the Overlord's blade gleaming as it swings around in a decapitating arc…  
Armament  
A Catacomb Command Barge can be armed with either of these weapons mounted on its underside:  
Tesla Cannon – Tesla Cannons unleash bolts of living lightning that crackles from foe to foe after hitting its target, charring flesh and melting armour. Tesla bolts feed off the energy released by the destruction they cause, thus making their lightning become more furious with every fresh arc.  
Gauss Cannon – The same weapon as that wielded most commonly by Necron Destroyers, Gauss Cannons make for a reliable weapon that is easily capable of laying waste to enemy infantry through the molecular disassembling beams they deliver; reducing flesh, armour and bone to their constituent atoms.  
Catacomb Command Barges are also protected by the following:  
Necrodermis - The armour of Catacomb Command Barges is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that makes up all Necron bodies and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself; whether this is the regeneration of parts of its hull, the reknitting of metal plates, and the reconnection of circuits and other delicate systems to bring its weapon online again.  
Quantum Shielding – Catacomb Command Barges are also protected by a layer of Quantum Shielding which exists out of phase from the rest of the vehicle until the moment of deflection. It can deflect the first shot that would otherwise penetrate the Barge's armour, after which it cannot be used again for some time.  
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Ghost Ark

Role

Much has changed for the Necrons in the countless millennia since their transformation, and the role of the Ghost Ark has changed with it. No longer the gaolers of the living, they are now the redeemers of the fallen, tasked with trawling battlefields for remnants of Necrons no longer able to reconstruct themselves. While these sinister vehicles can serve as ordinary troop carriers, the true potential of the Ghost Arks only becomes apparent once the battle is in full tilt. As it glides ponderously across the battlefield, a Ghost Ark stops for each downed Necron, a veritable tide of minuscule repair Scarabs swarming over the dismembered soldier and carrying its components aboard the Ghost Ark. As the Ghost Ark continues its mission of dark mercy, so the Scarabs continue their work with near-silent efficiency, rebuilding all but the most thoroughly demolished Necrons in short order, returning them to full function. Once its contingent of passengers is full and safely locked in stasis, the Ghost Ark will either return its salvaged cargo to their Tomb World, or travel to wherever reinforcements are most needed to disgorge its payload, much to the dismay of the Necrons' foes.  
Ghost Arks are often pressed into service as conventional transport vehicles, conveying Necron reinforcements to some vital area of the battlefield, or allowing Necron forces to attack from an unexpected quarter. The enemy's predicament is made all the worse by the fact that Necrons deployed in this fashion are, to all intents and purposes, accompanied by their own mobile repair station. Only by destroying the Ghost Ark can the foe have any hope of victory.

While Ghost Arks seldom pose a direct threat, they often prove to be one of the greatest weapons in the Necron arsenal. Even when a foe begins to thin the ranks of the Necrons, a Ghost Ark has the potential to undo all of their hard-won progress. For this reason, enemies of the Necrons who have previously encountered these high-technology hearses tend to make them a priority target, even focusing fire on them before turning weapons on the advancing Necron infantry.

Armament  
Two Gauss Flayer Arrays –Ghost Arks are each armed with two separate arrays of five Gauss Flayers - one located along each flank - enabling it to "broadside" enemy units across its sides. These two arrays enable the Ghost Ark to repel any enemy assaulters who manage to flank it, as well as those approaching from the rear due to the Ark's swift turning speeds.  
Necrodermis - The armour of a Ghost Ark is made up of the same living metal Necrodermis that makes up all Necron bodies and vehicles. Its remarkable regenerative properties allow it to automatically repair damage to itself; whether this is the regeneration of parts of its hull, the reknitting of metal plates, and the reconnection of circuits and other delicate systems to bring its weapons online again.  
Quantum Shielding – Ghost Arks are also protected by a layer of Quantum Shielding which exists out of phase from the rest of the vehicle until the moment of deflection. It can deflect the first shot that would otherwise penetrate the Ark's armour, after which it cannot be used again for some time.


	4. Chapter 4

Eldar

The **Eldar** are a race of fey-like humanoids similar in appearance and culture to the sylvan elves of ancient Terran mythology and literature, and they are the most ancient and technologically advanced of all the intelligent races of the Milky Way Galaxy, with the exception of the Old Ones, and their ancient enemies the Necrons. Their armies usually have the advantages of great mobility, potent psychic abilities and technology that is more advanced than that deployed by the human Imperium. In the sense that_Warhammer 40,000_ races are generally derived from the earlier _Warhammer Fantasy_universe, the Eldar are derived from the High Elves of the Warhammer World, except for the Eldar faction known as the Exodites who are the equivalent of the Wood Elves.

Biology

Superficially, the Eldar appear very similar to humans in their anatomy, though they are generally taller, faster, thinner, more lithe of limb and slim of face with sharp features and pointed ears. The Eldar possess essentially the same appearance as the elves of classic high fantasy literature. The Eldar are quite long-lived by human standards, and most will live for more than a thousand standard years unless they die from accident or disease. As a species, the Eldar have a universally high level of psychic ability, which also serves as the foundation of their technology, though a side-effect of this neurological make-up is that an Eldar experiences emotion, both pleasant and painful, far more intensely than any human being. The Eldar that actively cultivate their psychic potential seem to exhibit a much-extended lifespan as well, one proportional to their prowess. In this way the leaders and Seers of the Eldar may live for several thousand standard years. One matter of note is that the Eldar have sometimes referred to humans as "mammals" typically with a derogatory label in the Eldar Lexicon like "the Mon-Keigh", implying that for their part, the Eldar evolved from something else, something more advanced than the primates that are the ancestors of Mankind. The Eldar's physical attributes and physiology indicate that they are descended from a wide range of potential ancestors that include aquatic organisms or avian creatures, although some type of reptile seems most likely (despite their current humanoid appearance, the Eldar's ancestors may not have had a head with two eyes, or an upright body with two arms and two legs at all considering they were genetically altered by the Old Ones!) However, given the Eldar's legendary arrogance, this may also simply be a way for them to put themselves above the other intelligent races of the galaxy, particularly the humans who are currently the most dominant intelligent species, much to the Eldar's disdain. The Eldar likely see themselves as completely separate from the normal classifications of animal groups. Indeed, they may not even have naturally evolved at all, as they are actually the genetic creations of the Old Ones, much like the Orks, created to defend the galaxy and the Old Ones' civilisation from the depredations of the Necrons and theirC'tan masters.

History

All of the Eldar alive today are essentially a refugee population, the scattered remains of a formerly vast interstellar empire. Even in such straits, however, they are still a deadly and influential force in the galaxy. Once, over ten thousand years past, the Eldar were perhaps the most powerful race in existence, dominating a significant portion of the galaxy and secure in their prosperity. Although there were other intelligent races who possessed advanced technology and potent military power in the galaxy, none were in a position to seriously threaten the state of the Eldar empire. When it came, the disaster for the Eldar people was self-inflicted.

Because an Eldar spirit is reborn into a new body upon death, one individual was able to live countless lives. This, coupled with their already nigh-eternal lifespan and their ability to experience the highs and lows of emotions more powerful than that of any human, rendered the Eldar nearly immortal, consumed by arrogance and dedicated to the pursuit of their own pleasure. With no need to perform substantial work or labor, the Eldar began to pursue their curiosities and desires with all the dedication that only their species could muster. In the later days of Eldar civilization, cults devoted to exotic knowledge, physical pleasures, and ever-more outrageous forms of entertainment sprang up. It did not take long for many of the Eldar to pursue a darker path to achieve instant fulfillment as they came to revel in unbridled hedonism and violence.

Many of the Eldar grew uneasy with the actions of their comrades, and the wisest of the Seers warned that this path could lead only to evil and suffering for the entire species. Disgusted, some of the Eldar left the central worlds of their empire to settle in the outlying regions of the galaxy, where they built great starships of such tremendous size that they could be considered artificial planets and were called Craftworlds. Other Eldar stayed on the homeworlds to try and alter the path their race had taken.

The torture cults eroded the future of the Eldar as a viable galactic empire. While this debauchery would have been destructive within any society, it was even more damaging for the Eldar because of their powerful psychic abilities. Within the parallel dimensional realm of the Warp, the psychic emanations of these perverse activities began to gather, strengthened by the souls of departed Eldar hedonists and cultists. As the Eldar's vices grew, this dark mass of negative psychic energy did as well, producing the terrible Warp storms that defined humanity's Age of Strife and made all interstellar travel and communication impossible for the human colonies of this period. Eventually, this growing mass of negative psychic energy came into a life of its own and came to consciousness over ten thousand years ago at the end of the Age of Strife as the newborn Chaos God Slaanesh, the Devourer of Souls and the doom of the Eldar. The psychic scream of Slaanesh's birth tore the souls from all the Eldar within a thousand light years of it, sparing only those sheltered in the wraithbone hulls of the Craftworlds. The Prince of Pleasure's awakening was so forceful that it tore a hole between the physical realm and the Immaterium, plunging the Eldar homeworlds into a nightmare existence, trapped within the realm of Chaos. This region is now known as the Eye of Terror, and is the home of the forces of Chaos in the 41st millennium.

Since this time, which is known as The Fall, the Eldar have been a broken and scattered people, lacking both political cohesion and true purpose. Many of the outlying Eldar colony worlds, whose people are known as the Exodites, have slipped to a more primitive technological level similar to that of some feudal human worlds, while the survivors of the Eldar homeworlds drift through the stars in colossal nomad fleets and their Craftworlds, each independent of the others. All the Eldar have been greatly changed by The Fall and the rise of Slaanesh.

Unique Eldar Technology**Shuriken Weapons** - The standard weapon of the Eldar military forces are Shuriken guns, weapons that use gravitic forces to fire thin discs only a single molecule thick at the discs are so thin that they are usually fired in bursts. The Eldar use these weapons in the form of pistols, cannons, and a light carbine known as a Shuriken Catapult.**Spirit Stone** - When the Eldar die, their souls are in danger of being devoured in the Warp by the Chaos God Slaanesh. To prevent this, the Eldar created special Spirit Stones, which capture and contain the psychic energy that comprises their souls at the moment of death. These stones are then collected and inserted into a Craftworld's "Infinity Circuit", where they may rest along with the spirits of their ancestors. In times of need, the soul stones of the Craftworld's strongest warriors may be taken from the Infinity Circuit and placed inside Wraithbone automatons such as theWraithguard, Wraithlord and Wraithknight, to once again fight in defence of the Craftworld.**Webway** - The Eldar cannot travel through Warpspace in the same way the starships of the Imperium do, because they lack the equivalent of Navigators, making the trip extremely dangerous for a journey of any more than a few light years at a time. Instead they rely on a system of transportation through the Warp known as the Webway. The Webway is best imagined as a vast and tangled network of doorways connected through the Warp between fixed points in real space, by which the Eldar can travel far more rapidly than most Webway's technology is based on that of the Old Ones, who first developed a very similar system of transportation using Warp Gates and imparted the technology to the Eldar after their creation. However, if there is not a Warp Gate near an Eldar's destination, or the one present is not big enough to permit the necessary forces to pass through, they are at a disadvantage. Much of the Webway has fallen into obscurity and disrepair, with tunnels and doorways sealed or broken. This often forces the Eldar to make connecting stops on their way to their destination. Finally, it is said that the fabled Black Library, a storehouse for all the accumulated knowledge of the Eldar about Chaos, resides somewhere within the Webway, though only theHarlequins know exactly where.**Wraithbone** is the main construction material of the Eldar, and the staple of their psycho-technic engineering. It is brought forth into the physical world from the Warp and shaped by Bonesingers through the use of their psychic power. It is used to create the Craftworlds of the Eldar, their tanks and other vehicles, constructs such as the Wraithguard and Wraithlords, as well as their weapons, tools and armor. Wraithbone is a psychically conductive material and so not only provides the structure for things built of it, but also can be used for power distribution and communications. Wraithbone is a highly resilient material, and capable of limited self-repair when exposed to psychic energy. It, and the other building materials of the Eldar, will grow and react more like organic tissue and plants than the inorganic building materials of other races.**Blackstone Fortress** - The Blackstone Fortresses were originally created by the Old Ones as weapons in the first war against the C'tan, and were known to the ancient Eldar as the Talismans of Vaul. To capitalise on theC'tan's vulnerability to psychic attacks using Warp energy, the Fortresses were equipped with a Warp-cannon that could create a devastating rip in physical space and an eruption of psychic energy out of the Immaterium. The fortresses have since fallen into the hands of the Imperium and the Chaos Space Marines, and have influenced two of the most recent major wars of the Imperium of Man, during the Gothic War and the 13th Black Crusade.Forces of the Eldar

Held in high esteem by seer and soldier alike, the Autarchs are the supreme commanders of an Eldar Craftworld's warhost, possessing a consummate understanding of the art of war. They are followers of the Eldar Path of Command - a burning obsession with mastering a wider vision of the battle and directing the Eldar warhost in the most lethal and efficient way to victory.

Farseer

Farseers follow the most dangerous and convoluted Eldar Path of all, that of the Path of the Seer, also called the Path of the Witch. Those Eldar who are trapped on the Witch Path and progress too far along it to leave it behind when the time comes are Farseers. Farseers are masters of prediction, psychically exploring the myriad skeins of past and future to better guide their people to victory. They are also the eldest and most experienced of a Craftworld's advisors. Just as Farseers guide the fate of the Craftworlds, so they guide their armies in times of wars, using their innate abilities to uncover an enemy's intentions, calculate the likely effects of their clumsy attacks, and guide them to their doom.

Warlock

Warlocks are those Seers who also once trod the Path of the Warrior for a time as an EldarAspect Warrior. They follow the most aggressive and warlike of all the Witch Paths, using their previous experience as warriors to harness their destructive psychic impulses in battle. When the Eldar go to war, their Warlocks accompany them, using their powerful psychic abilities to both protect the other Eldar Warriors and to bring havoc to their enemies.

Avatar of Khaine

An Avatar of Khaine is a manifestation of the Bloody-Handed God, Kaela Mensha Khaine himself - a terrifying statue of immobile meteoric iron that lies enthroned, deep in the heart of every Craftworld. A fragment of the Eldar War God's essence slumbers within every Craftworld's Infinity Circuit, only awakening to possess the body of the Avatar when summoned to war.

Phoenix Lord

A Phoenix Lord is one of the most ancient of the Eldar Exarchs, a demigod of battle whose legend spans the stars. The first Exarchs, the Asurya, founded the shrines of the Warrior Aspects as the Eldar know them today. Every Phoenix Lord is actually a disembodied soul that possesses the body of its most skilled Exarch when its prior host is inevitably slain in battle. As such, while a Phoenix Lord's appearance may change, they are able to draw on millennia of combat experience and skill.

**Asurmen** - Asurmen is the first and the oldest of all the Phoenix Lords, and his name in the Eldar Lexiconmeans the "Hand of Asuryan", the father and ruler of all the lost Eldar Gods. Asurmen acts as Asuryan's immortal scion since that Eldar God was devoured by Slaanesh during the Fall. Asurmen led his people into exile, abandoning his homeworld in the Eldar empire to the horrors of the Eye of Terror's birth. He founded the first of the Aspect Warrior shrines.**Karandras** - Karandras, The Shadow Hunter, is the Eldar Phoenix Lord of the Striking Scorpions Aspect Warriors. Legends of Karandras the Shadow Hunter tell of one of the most mysterious of all the Phoenix Lords. Unlike his fellow Phoenix Lords, Karandras was not the first of the Exarchs of the Striking Scorpions. It is said that this singular honour belongs to the one that came before him, Arhra, the Father of Scorpions, whom turned to Chaos and became the Fallen Phoenix.**Jain Zar** - Jain Zar, The Storm of Silence, is the Phoenix Lord and founder of the Eldar's Howling BansheesAspect Warriors. Jain Zar was the first warrior chosen to serve at the side of the first Phoenix Lord, Asurmen, and the first of her race to become an Exarch.**Fuegan** - Fuegan, the Burning Lance, is the Phoenix Lord of the Fire Dragons Aspect Warriors, who schooled the first of them in the art of war with fire and flame. He learned the arts of war in the Shrine of Asur, under the eyes of Asurmen in the distant time many millennia ago when the first Aspect Warriors of the Eldar were trained.**Baharroth** - Baharroth, the Cry of the Wind, is the Winged Phoenix, the oldest of the Swooping Hawks and the first Exarch of those winged Aspect Warriors. Baharroth is the founder of the Eldar Warrior Path that is represented today by the Swooping Hawks Aspect Shrines.**Maugan Ra** - Maugan Ra, the Harvester of Souls, is the founder and Phoenix Lord of the Eldar's Dark ReaperAspect Warriors. He was the lone survivor of the once-lost Craftworld of Altansar, which was swallowed by theEye of Terror five hundred Terran years after the Fall. During the 13th Black Crusade, Maugan Ra led a daring raid into the Eye and rescued the remnants of his long-lost home Craftworld, guiding them out of the Eye of Terror and denying Abaddon the Despoiler his ultimate victory over the Imperium of Man.**Elites**Striking ScorpionsFire DragonsWraithguardHowling BansheesHarlequin Troupe**Troops**Dire AvengersRangersGuardiansGuardian Jetbike Squadron**Fast Attack**Shining SpearsWarp SpidersSwooping HawksVyper Squadrons**Heavy Support**Support Weapon Battery**D-Cannon****Vibro Cannon****Shadow Weaver**Dark ReaperWraithlordWar Walker SquadronFalconFire Prism**Transport**Wave SerpentThe Eldar Nations

Following the Fall, the Eldar were socially and culturally divided into several broad groups. While there are divisions within each of these, they are the most obvious and clearly defined groups of the existing race (the Dark Eldar are obviously excluded here and are considered a separate species all together by most Eldar):

Craftworld Eldar

In the time leading up to the Great Fall, not all the Eldar that remained on their empire's homeworlds fell to the lure of perversity and hedonism that birthed Slaanesh. Many remained behind, struggling to turn their species from its doomed path. Unable to do so, many of the greatest Seers caught glimpses of the darkness to come, and undertook a titanic effort to save their people. For each Eldar homeworld of the empire a gigantic starship was created, sung from Wraithbone and so massive as to be nearly a planetoid in itself. The last uncorrupted individuals from each world were loaded onto these ships, along with works of art, plant life and animals, all that could be saved. In these Craftworlds (as they came be known) the final Eldar Exodus began, and only barely in time. The psychic shockwave of Slaanesh's birth in the 30th Millennium caught some of the Craftworlds and destroyed them, while others were pulled into orbit against their will around the Eye of Terror, to be forever assaulted by the Forces of Chaos until they are destroyed or corrupted. The rest drift through the galaxy, their exact number uncertain, as contact can be difficult and intermittent. There are several Craftworlds of particular fame known to the Imperium:

**Alaitoc** - Far out on the frontiers of the galaxy, on the edge of explored space, lies the Alaitoc Craftworld. The Alaitoc Eldar are zealous in their vigilance against the touch of Slaanesh, even more so than other Eldar. For these two reasons many of its citizens will at one time or another decide to leave the strict confines of the vast starship and strike out on their own or in small groups. They will return in times of need, however, and so all Alaitoc armies will have a substantial force of scouts and Rangers. Whereas their kin have forgotten their people's duty to watch for the return of their ancient enemies theNecrons, the Eldar of Alaitoc have not. When the Necrons first began to awaken Alaitoc was quick to respond, sabotaging the systems of awakening Tomb Worlds, and lending aid to Exodites threatened by their reemerging enemies.**Altansar **- Altansar is a small Craftworld that had been on the edge of the shockwave that created the Eye of Terror at the time of the Fall. Altansar was long thought to have been lost in the birth of the Eye of Terror with the other homeworlds of the Eldar. However, there were reports of its sighting and even active involvement in the recently conducted campaign against the Eye of Terror, and doubt now exists as to its fate, though other Eldar will view any citizens of Altansar with suspicion, as no Eldar Craftworld has ever been known to exist within the Eye of Terror for so long without being corrupted by Chaos.**Biel-tan** - The most martial of the Craftworlds, the people of Biel-tan have decided to reforge the Eldar empire. Its armies contain the highest percentages of elite troops of all the Craftworlds, and few of the staple citizen-militia called Guardians that most Craftworlds call upon in times of war. Their highly-trained forces are known as the Swordwind, and they often come to the aid of Exodite worlds beset by Orks, Dark Eldar or other xenosdangers.**Il-Kaithe** - Il-Kaithe is one of the lesser known Eldar Craftworlds located with the Segmentum Obscurus. Being in close proximity to the Eye of Terror, the Eldar of this Crafworld are constantly at war with the Forces of Chaos. They are notable for having talented Bonesingers, whom are said to possess the innate ability to practice their psychic art even during the heat of battle.**Iyanden** - The Iyanden Craftworld was once one of the largest and most prosperous of all the remaining Craftworlds. Its path brought it into the way of the Tyranid invasion of Hive Fleet Kraken, however, and the Craftworld was nearly destroyed in the following battles. Today many of its sections are still in ruins and the population is spread thinly across its ruined sections. This forces Iyanden to often call upon the spirits of its fallen in its Infinity Circuit, raising more than the typical numbers of Wraithguard and Wraithlords to aid their dwindling warriors in battle.**Iybraesil** - Iybraesil is an Eldar Craftworld located within the Western Quadrant of the Segmentum Obscurus. Their society is comprised of a matriarchal system. They are notable for being followers of Morai-Heg, the Crone Goddess of Fate. Eldar of this Craftworld aspire to recover the long lost secrets of the Crone Worlds, the original homeworlds of the Eldar that were swallowed by the Eye of Terror after the Fall.**Kaelor** - Kaelor is a relatively obscure and extremely isolated Eldar Craftworld. Virtually nothing of its early history is known except that in the distant past this Craftworld made a Webway jump towards the fringes of the galaxy and has not ventured towards the galactic centre for several millennia since then. It is known that Craftworld Kaelor's migration route brings it through the Calixis Sector once every thousand Terran years. On such occasions, Imperial authorities have strict — and highly confidential — instructions from the Inquisition'sOrdo Xenos to give it a wide birth. Kaelor is effectively cut off and has virtually no contact with the rest of the galaxy. Even the Harlequins barely remember its existence.**Kher-Ys** - The Eldar Craftworld of Kher-Ys drifted too close to the Eye of Terror and was destroyed through the guile and deceit of Ail'Slath'Sleresh, a Keeper of Secrets Greater Daemon, known also as the Heartslayer. Bewitching an Eldar maiden, the daughter of an Autarch of Kher-Ys, he stole the psychic key from the Autarch and was able to drop the psychic barriers that protected the Craftworld from the daemons of the Eye. In a great multitude, daemons descended upon the Craftworld and gorged themselves on the souls of the Eldar of Kher-Ys and Slaanesh claimed his prized jewel. This dead Craftworld now drifts among the outer eddies of the Eye of Terror empty and desolate, its corridors still ringing with the death cries of its people and the laughter of its daemonic slayers.**Lugganath** - The lesser known Craftworld of Lugganath is known to be active within the Western Quadrant of the Segmentum Obscurus. It is said that the citizens of Lugganath have strong ties with the Eldar Harlequins, for the Lugganath Eldar hope to abandon the galaxy, starting a new Eldar civilization within the Webway.**Malan'tai** - The smaller Craftworld of Malan'tai was turned into a lifeless, drifting derelict in 812.M41, by the assault of a uniquely adapted Tyranid Zoanthrope that could feed upon the psychic energy and souls of its victims, known as the Doom of Malan'tai. Only a few scattered survivors managed to escape the fate of their fallen kinsmen. The Craftworld's husk was later infected by the presence of a Slaaneshi Keeper of Secretsnamed N'Kari who began to devour the remaining souls within the Craftworld's Infinity Circuit and those within the Spirit Stones of the fallen, but was defeated by a force of Grey Knight Purifiers.**Saim-Hann** - Saim-Hann is one of the more barbaric and wild of the large Craftworlds. The warriors of Saim-Hann favour rapid attacks and moving battles. It regularly organizes its forces into ranks of skimmers and jetbikes known as the Wild Riders, and the forces of Saim-Hann are famed for the speed and ferocity of their attacks, even amongst the highly-mobile forces of the Eldar.**Ulthwé** - One of the largest Craftworlds, Ulthwé was caught in the pull of the Eye of Terror after it erupted into being, and now orbits it. As such it faces a constant danger of attack by Chaotic marauders and has served as a bastion against the Dark Powers for thousands of Terran years. The constant war and risk of attack has hardened the Craftworld's citizens, and it maintains a standing militia force known as the Black Guardians. Its proximity to the Eye has also given it an unusually large number of potent psychics, even for the Eldar.**Yme-Loc** - Yme-Loc is one of the lesser known Eldar Craftworlds, located in proximity to the Eye of Terror between 989.M39 and 341.M40. It is said that the Eldar of Yme-Loc are talented artisans, and that their armies are supported by powerful grav-tanks and Eldar Titans.**Zahr-Tann** - Zahr-Tann is a minor Eldar Craftworld, of which little is known in Imperial records.

The Craftworlds' populations probably compose the majority of the surviving Eldar race, although it is impossible to say just how many individuals this is. The Craftworlds are certainly the seat of the remaining Eldar industry, technology, and culture, as they contain the only vestiges of their original homeworlds' civilisation. Most of the Craftworlds contain special biodomes that house plants and wildlife from the original homeworld of the Craftworld's people, and these are carefully tended. Although each Craftworld is essentially independent in its actions and governance, they will generally offer and accept aid and advice from one another. Although not common, sometimes Craftworld disagreements will cause two to clash on the field of battle, though this is always a last resort.

Every Craftworld contains an Infinity Circuit, which is essentially the Wraithbone skeleton of the Craftworld itself. Within this crystalline matrix of solidified psychic power, the souls of all the Craftworld's dead reside in a form of group consciousness, providing both a well of potent psychic power that can be harnessed by the ship during times of distress and a massive ancestral mind to advise and guide the living. With the rise of Slaanesh, the Infinity Circuit is the closest thing that the Eldar have to an afterlife; if their souls are not caught and integrated into it, they will be lost into the Warp and devoured by the Great Enemy, whose resonant Chaotic energies draw Eldar souls into itself, much as moths are drawn to a flame. For this reason the Eldar will defend their Craftworlds with a fury and tenacity almost unrivalled by other races; they risk losing not only their home but their very souls as well.

Exodites

During The Fall, the degeneration of the Eldar did not proceed wholly without resistance. Some Eldar, the more far-sighted, began to openly criticize the laxity and perversity of their fellow citizens, and to warn against the effect of Chaos cults. These people were mostly ignored or else treated as narrow-minded fools and religious fanatics. Soon the general collapse of Eldar society convinced even the most resolute amongst them that there would be no end to the reign of death and depravity. Some decided to leave the Eldar homeworlds, and settle new planets free of the creeping corruption. They were the ones still untainted by the touch of Chaos, and by now they were few. These Eldar are known as the Exodites.

The Exodite worlds are generally considered backward and rustic compared to the rest of the space-roaming Eldar (and thus are commonly thought to be the equivalent of the Wood Elves instead of High Elves), although they still possess a good deal of the Eldar's advanced technology. One of the pieces of technology they have maintained is the Infinity Circuit, although on the Exodite worlds these are known as World Spirits and exist in the form of grids of stone menhirs, obelisks, and stone circles all crafted from psychoactive crystal. Despite the presence of some technology, these worlds are often agricultural, however, and it is not uncommon for groups of Exodites to exist in a primitive, nomadic state, living off roaming herds of pastoral animals and seasonal harvests. This is the most common image of the Exodite life among Craftworld Eldar. Many Craftworld Outcasts will find a refuge among these Eldar, who are generally more accepting.

Many Craftworld Eldar regard the Exodites a sort of rural, backwater group that is quaint at best. To others, the Exodites represent the foundation of a new Eldar empire on the edge of the galaxy, composed of the descendants of those far-sighted and strong-willed enough to escape the touch of Slaanesh. The Biel-tan Craftworld is one of the chief proponents of the Exodite potential, and will often mobilize its forces in defense of one of the scattered worlds.

Known Exodite militaries consist solely of the Exodite Dragon Knights. These Eldar ride various types of reptilian mounts into battle and are known as Exodite Knights and Lords. The Dragon Knights use a laser lance and wear carapace-style armor.

Harlequin

The Eldar Harlequin are followers of the strange Eldar God called Cegorach, theLaughing God, one of the only two Eldar Gods to survive the Fall and consumption by Slaanesh. Harlequins are warrior troubadours whose carefully constructed masques and impressive displays of mime and acrobatics tell the many strange stories of Eldar Mythology. They wear exotic multicolored costumes, brightly patterned to represent figures from the Eldar myth cycles. The groups will wander through the Webway, visiting Craftworlds and other Eldar strongholds in order to re-enact stories from the ancient mythic cycles through song and dance. These strange performances are highly symbolic and are considered an important event for the Eldar.

The Harlequins will also appear in times of need and fight alongside other Eldar, aiding them in the interest of some secret goal. They are highly skilled combatants who deal almost entirely in close-quarters melee combat. Harlequins are the sworn enemies of Chaos. They guard the Black Library, the hidden Craftworld within the Webway where all the Eldar's knowledge of Chaos lies. The Harlequins are an enigmatic group even amongst the other Eldar, and they rarely communicate with anyone outside of their troupes at all.

Outcasts and Corsairs

Unlike the other groups of Eldar society, the Eldar Outcasts and Corsairsare not very clearly defined. Some Eldar pirates are actually just part of the long-ranging fleets of the Craftworlds, and others are groups of Harlequins or Dark Eldar that have been mistakenly identified. Some may even be an enduring fleet of surviving Eldar that fled from the Fall but lost or lacked a Craftworld to rally around, and have since forged a base on an asteroid or uninhabited world. Many Eldar will leave their regular lives following one of the Eldar Paths to become Outcasts and pirates for a time, enjoying the freedom and wealth of experience this offers them before they return to more ordered and structured lives.

There are also those Eldar that have been forced into piracy and exile, often as a result of their own actions and choices. Some Eldar refuse to obey the strict rules of the Craftworld or commit crimes among their people, and choose to flee rather than face judgment. One of the most famous pirates was Yriel of Craftworld Iyanden, a former fleet commander who was exiled for leaving his Craftworld under-defended whilst pursuing an attack on the Forces of Chaos within the Eye of Terror. He and his crew formed a band of pirates that worked between various human planets, often contracting their services out to the various human colony worlds. He eventually assembled a sizeable fleet, and later returned to save Iyanden from the assault of the Tyranids and redeem himself.

Many Eldar pirates are far less noble, however. There are many among them who have taken the same dark road as the Eldar of old, pursuing what many Eldar refer to as the Path of Damnation, and work as pirates in order to fill their bottomless thirst for thrill and combat. In general, all Eldar pirates are quick-tempered and unpredictable, traits in the Eldar that surface rapidly once they are outside the ordered societies they build for themselves to keep the temptations of Chaos at bay.

Neither pirates nor Outcasts are welcome aboard Craftworlds except briefly, for their minds are dangerously unbounded and attract daemonic predators from the psychic realms of theWarp. Daemons or other Warp entities can home in on the mind of an Outcast and lodge in the psycho-supportive environment of the Craftworld's Wraithbone core. Outcasts are also disruptive in another sense, for their presence can distract the young and inexperienced from the Eldar path by their romantic tales of travel and freedom from all constraint.

The Eldar Paths

The Eldar are forever wary of falling into the same trap which led them to the Fall. In order to avoid slipping into such debauchery and wanton disregard for life and law, most Eldar take an extremely focused view of life. Rather than dabbling in various skills and occupations, they will choose a single skill or role and dedicate themselves wholly, in body and soul, to mastering it. Their long lives mean that a single Eldar will often master several skills or Paths in the course of their life, pursuing each until they feel they have reached their potential and then choosing a new one. The nature of the Eldar makes it easy for them to become obsessed with their goal, however, and many Eldar become locked into their focus forever, unable to let go of their role. Such Eldar are said to be lost on their Path.

The Path of the Warrior

Eldar are known to pursue any task they set out to do with an intensity that makes human efforts pale in comparison. When an Eldar feels called to the Path of the Warrior, he or she will join an Aspect Shrine_,_ a cult of Eldar warriors who train themselves to embody an aspect of the Eldar War God Khaine.

Each Aspect Shrine is led by an Exarch, an Eldar who has found him-or-herself unable to leave the Path of the Warrior. These Exarchs are powerful warriors, doomed to either die on the battlefield, or to eventually be chosen to become the Avatar of Khaine. The first member or founder of an entire Aspect Shrine is called the Phoenix Lord. When an Aspect warrior becomes an Exarch, forever forgoing the pursuit of another Path, they will don one of the ancient suits of armour that belong to that shrine, and according to legend this suit will bond to their flesh irreversibly. This means that the new warrior merges with all the previous Exarchs of the suit, like a tiny version of the Infinity Circuit.

Below are listed some of the most common Eldar Warrior Aspects. The list is by no means exhaustive, but these are Aspects whose shrines exist on more than just one or two Craftworlds.

**Dire Avengers** - The Dire Avengers are the oldest and most numerous Aspect. They represent the Eldar War God Khaine in his aspect as the noblest of warriors. They are merciless to their foes and unwavering in their devotion to their people. They are armed with Shuriken Catapults, an effective if short ranged weapon, and perform as elite troops. A Dire Avenger Exarch can be equipped to improve his squads' close combat abilities by being equipped with a Diresword along with a Shuriken Pistolor a Shimmershield along with a Power Weapon for more melee strength. The Phoenix Lord of the Dire Avengers is Asurmen, the Hand of Asur. He was the first of the Phoenix Lords and the greatest, who instructed all the other founding Aspect Phoenix Lords in the skills of combat.**Dark Reapers** - The Dark Reapers represent the Eldar war god Khaine in his aspect as a destroyer, and specialize in long range firepower. They are the most menacing of the Eldar Aspect Warriors, their skull-masked costume echoes that of their founder and Phoenix Lord, the Harvester of Souls, Maugan Ra. Their standard weapon is a reaper launcher which is a powerful, long-ranged weapon that fires several small missiles at the target. The Dark Reapers superb aim enables them to dominate the battlefield, pinning down enemy forces and destroying their chosen targets at will. An Exarch of the Dark Reapers Aspect wears a more potent form of Dark Reaper Aspect Armour and can wield a number of different special weapons, including an Eldar Missile Launcher, a Tempest Launcher and aShuriken Cannon.**Eagle Pilot** - An Eagle Pilot is an Eldar Aspect Warrior, who like the Swooping Hawks, takes exultant pleasure in the arts of aerial combat. These Eldar are superb pilots of any type of Eldar aircraft or spacecraft, but especially excel in the aerial arts of war. Their skill and artistry in flight is nearly unmatched by the combat pilots of any other species, as they take to the skies in their Nightwing interceptors or Phoenix strike aircraft. Their Phoenix Lord is Amon Harakht, of whom almost nothing is known to Imperial savants.**Fire Dragons** - The Fire Dragons are modeled upon the dragon of Eldar myth, the sinuous fire-breathing reptile that represents wanton destruction. Fire Dragons are aggressive and warlike and seek nothing less than the total annihilation of their chosen foes. They have an unsurpassed mastery of heat weapons, and take savage delight in the devastation they create. The Fire Dragons specialize in long-range firepower and anti-tank warfare. They carry a fusiongun and melta bombs, both excellent weapons for dealing with vehicles. The fusion gun is also very effective against heavy infantry such as Space Marine Terminators, but is limited by its short range. The Exarchs of the Fire Dragons are often armed with a powerful Dragon's Breath Flamer, which can deal massive amounts of damage unto lighter infantry, especially groups of light infantry troops. Fire Dragon Exarchs make for excellent tank destroyers, as well as highly dangerous in close combat. It is said their Exarchs generate a corona of lambent flame around themselves when the battle lust is upon them. The Phoenix Lord of the Fire Dragons is Fuegan, the Burning Lance.**Howling Banshees** - The Howling Banshees are a close combat aspect made up primarily of female Eldar. This Aspect specialises in highly mobile melee combat. The Banshee is a harbinger of woe and death in Eldar Mythology. Their cry is said to herald ill fate and can even wrench a soul from its Spirit Stone. It is fitting that the most feared of all the Aspect Warriors draw their inspiration from this creature. The Howling Banshees are equipped with a shuriken pistol and power weapon. As the power weapon negates armor, the Banshees are very effective against well-armored opponents like Space Marines. Banshees also wear masks that contain psychosonic amplifiers that magnify their keening battle screams into mind-destroying shock waves. This inflicts severe damage to the central nervous system of the Eldar's foe, inspiring a feeling of mortal terror and causing momentary paralysis. A full squad of Banshees activating their masks in unison can cripple an enemy unit before a single blow is struck. A Howling Banshee Exarch is deadly for she can wield a pair of Mirrorblades or the dreadedExecutioner. The Phoenix Lord of the Howling Banshees is Jain Zar, the Storm of Silence.**Shadow Spectres** - The Shadow Spectres are a recently re-discovered Eldar Aspect Warriors who specialise in the deployment of highly-mobile, infantry-based anti-armour firepower who are experts at striking at enemy vehicles from concealment and extreme long-range. The Shadow Spectres represent the Eldar God of War, Khaine in his aspect as the bringer of unexpected death on the battlefield. Armed with Prism Rifles, which are infantry versions of the massive Prism Cannons deployed on Eldar Fire Prism grav-tanks, Holofield emitters and equipped with Jetpacks, their mobility allows them to hunt down their chosen targets with the implacable patience of the dead, materialising seemingly from the very air to unleash their overwhelming firepower. Shadow Spectre Aspect Warriors are capable of combining the power of their Prism Rifles using a sophisticated targeting matrix known as the Ghostlight. The Ghostlight combines each individual shot from a squad of Shadow Spectres into a single searing blast of energy with a greatly magnified range that allows the Aspect Warriors to destroy an enemy's armoured support from an unseen location far across the battlefield. The long-lost Phoenix Lord of the Shadow Spectres is Irillyth, the Shade of Twilight**Shining Spears** - The Shining Spears are one of the rarest and most specialised of the Eldar Aspect Warriors. They represent the Spear of Kaela Mensha Khaine, the invincible weapon of the Eldar God of War that struck like lightning and killed any foe with a single blow. Shining Spears can be distinguished from all of the other Eldar Aspects for they are the only Aspect Warriors to make use of the anti-gravity Jetbike. Shining Spears wield the Laser Lance as their only weapon. The Laser Lance shoots a powerful short-ranged laser beam that is strong enough to be used to run down any enemy units. In this way the Shining Spears are meant to operate similar to high-technology heavy cavalry units. The Shining Spear Exarch can be given a bright lance, providing an accurate but very expensive anti-tank unit. As one of the rarer Aspects, the identity of the Shining Spears Phoenix Lord is not known.**Striking Scorpions** - The Striking Scorpions are another close combat Aspect. They are armed with Chainswords, Shuriken Pistols and helmet-mounted Mandiblasters. Theypossess better armour than the other Warrior Aspects, and are generally physically stronger than most Eldar warriors. These characteristics allow them to work very well against large numbers of weaker opponents. They are also effective against stronger opponents, but their Eldar physical fragility works against them here. The Striking Scorpion Exarch can be armed with a biting blade which is effective against a few enemies, and a Scorpion's Claw, which combines aPowerfist and a Shuriken Catapult. The Phoenix Lord of the Striking Scorpions is Karandras, the Shadow Hunter.**Swooping Hawks** - The Swooping Hawks are a highly mobile Warrior Aspect. Equipped with an anti-gravitic Jump Pack with stylized wings for atmospheric control, they can move rapidly across the battlefield, dropping grenades upon the enemy before swooping in for the kill. Their weapons are not that powerful, and they work best as a flanking unit. However, theirHaywire Grenades can wreak havoc on enemy vehicles and infantry. Also their lasblasters can fire quick (although weak) shots at the enemy. They do rely heavily on mobility and their ability to retreat quickly. The Swooping Hawk Exarch can be tooled up to be devastating in close combat. The Phoenix Lord of the Swooping Hawks is Baharroth, the Cry of the Wind.**Warp Spiders** - The Warp Spiders are another highly mobile Aspect, equipped with a Warp Spider jump generator which allows them to jump into and out of the Warp, avoiding any obstacles in their way. This is considered extremely dangerous, as it might attract the attention ofdaemons. Since they do not have to run all over the battlefield, Warp Spiders have stronger armor than most other aspects. They are armed with death spinners, which fire a net of monomolecular threads which slice into the flesh of the enemy as it entangles them. Warp Spiders often make use of a set of cybernetic arms to supplement their own in battle. The Aspect's Death Spinner weapon is extremely powerful, although it lacks the ability to pierce Power Armour. The Warp Spider Exarch can be given the ability to withdraw from combat through Warp teleportation, enhancing the Warp Spiders' survivability. The Warp Spiders have no known Phoenix Lord.The Path of the Seer

Where the Aspects are responsible for the defense of the Eldar, the Seers are responsible for leading them. Those that start down the Path of the Seer are known as Warlocks if they had previously ever followed the Path of the Warrior. Those Seers that become lost upon the path forever are known as the Farseers. A council of the most powerful Seers generally governs a Craftworld or other Eldar group.

Unsurprisingly, the primary role of the Seers is to look into the future using their psychic powers in an attempt to discern the best path for the Eldar to take in their endeavours. This is done through the casting of Runestones, fragments ofWraithbone and other psychosensitive materials that react to the skeins of time. By reading the throw of these stones, the Seers can often determine what will be the most beneficial course of action, though it is rare that they can discern true results any great distance into the future. On occasion a powerful Seer will receive a portent of some calamitous event, and be able to steer the Eldar away from disaster and doom. With so few Eldar remaining, the Seers attempt to preserve every Eldar life they can, regardless of the cost to other intelligent races.

The Farseers lead the Eldar of the Craftworlds in times of war as well as peace. On the battlefield their powers of precognition allow them to foresee enemies' attacks and movements, and warn their comrades against imminent changes on the field of battle. While less capable of foreseeing events in such harried conditions, Warlocks will often serve as officers in battle, leading units of other Eldar and helping to coordinate the overall battle, as well as lend support through their destructive psychic attacks.

Other Paths

While the Seer and the Warrior are two of the most visible Paths of the Eldar, there are hundreds of others. Many Eldar will choose the study of an instrument or art form as their Path, while others might devote themselves to the development of a science or the refinement of some technology. These Paths, while equally important to the survival of the Eldar, tend to be far more varied and far less all-consuming than those of the Seer and the Warrior. Notable among the other Paths is that of the Bonesinger; the title given to those that maintain and repair the psycho-activeWraithbone components of the Eldar Craftworlds. Also notable is the Path of the Mariner, the Path followed by those who devote themselves to crewing spacecraft.

The Eldar Gods

The Pantheon of Eldar Gods is considered to have been destroyed by the creation of Slaanesh. While the Eldar still revere all the gods of the pantheon and preserve their stories within the mythic cycles, they do not call on them for aid or hope for their intervention any longer. There are many similarities between the mythology surrounding the Eldar pantheon and aspects of the ancient mythologies of the Greek and Norse cultures of Old Earth. It is assumed that the _Warhammer 40,000_ creators drew heavily on these existing sources of real world mythology when creating the Eldar race and the defining mythic stories of their culture.

Kaela Mensha Khaine, God of War

Kaela Mensha Khaine is one of the only two surviving Gods of the Eldar. In the old pantheon, he was second only to Asuryan himself in power, and was often shown as the enemy of Vaul. He is also the most violent and reckless of the gods. Asuryan was so appalled by his murder of Eldanesh, a mortal Eldar, that he cursed Khaine and made his hands drip eternally with the blood of Eldanesh so that everyone would remember what he had done. The Eldar say that when Slaanesh awoke, he/she (Slaanesh can appear as either gender at will) consumed each of the other Eldar gods in the Warp in turn. While his counterparts were all devoured, Khaine took up his great sword and did battle with Slaanesh instead. Khaine was not strong enough to destroy Slaanesh, but he was too powerful to be defeated. Instead his psychic signature in the Warp was broken, and scattered into pieces. These pieces were driven from the Warp where they had done battle and came to rest in the heart of the Infinity Circuit of each Craftworld. These pieces of the god became theAvatars of Kaela Mensha Khaine. In times of war the Eldar can awaken him to lead them into battle, though the price is the sacrifice of an Exarch's life, for the Avatar needs to possess a physical body to enter the material universe. The Avatars of Khaine are towering monsters with skin of iron and molten cores, hands permanently dripping with blood as Khaine's did.

Cegorach (The Laughing God), God of the Harlequins

The only other surviving god of the Eldar Pantheon, Cegorach, also known as the Laughing God, the Great Harlequin, the Great Fool and the First Fool, was a consummate trickster and artist of the Eldar Gods. While most of the Eldar Gods were destroyed by Slaanesh during the Fall of the Eldar, according to legend this deity survived because his mocking nature distanced him from the collective psychic corruption and decadence of the ancient Eldar empire that birthed the Chaos God Slaanesh. Other legends tell that when all the other Gods were destroyed, Cegorach fled before Slaanesh until Khaine rose to do battle with her. It is said that during the fight between Slaanesh and Khaine the Laughing God hid behind Khaine for protection, and in the aftermath of the struggle Cegorach fled into the Webway where Slaanesh could not find him. He still resides there, and is the only being in the universe who knows exactly where every door in the Webway leads. As the master and patron god of the mysterious Harlequins, Cegorach is the only Eldar God that still remains in his original form. The Harlequins are protected from Slaanesh in a different way from their Craftworld brethren. While Craftworld Eldar wear Spirit Stones which absorb their souls when they die to prevent them from being devoured by Slaanesh in the Warp, the Eldar Harlequins are directly protected by their faith in their God's power, becoming one with his Warp emanation upon their death. The only exception to this are the Harlequin Solitaires whose souls must be won from Slaanesh after their deaths by the Laughing God.

Asuryan, King of the Eldar Gods

Sometimes known as the Phoenix King, Asuryan was the king of the pantheon of Eldar Gods. While the mythic cycles seem to indicate that he held sway over all the others, he was nevertheless consumed by Slaanesh in the Warp. He is often depicted in relation to fire and light, his chief symbols.

Isha, Goddess of the Harvest

The Great Mother of the Eldar race, Isha is a fertility goddess in many respects. She was imprisoned by Khaine for a period of time, until Vaul paid her ransom. She is often depicted crying, and her symbol is a teared eye, symbolic of her sorrow in being separated from her mortal children. Her tears are said to have solidified to form the Spirit Stones which keep the Eldar safe from Slaanesh after their death. It is rumoured that the Chaos God Nurgle coveted the Eldar fertility goddess, and rescued her from consumption by Slaanesh only to imprison her in his decaying mansion that lies within his foul realm in the Warp. Nurgle "cares" for Isha by feeding her the various diseases he concocts, only for her to whisper the cures for each one to mortals when his back is turned.

Vaul, God of the Forges

The artificer of the Eldar Gods, Vaul is one of the central gods of the Eldar Pantheon, and an enemy to Khaine. In order to purchase the freedom of Kurnous and Isha, Khaine demanded one hundred blades from the Smith God. Vaul was unable to finish the last blade in time, and so hid a mortal blade amid the others of immortal craftsmanship. This fooled Khaine long enough to get Isha and Kurnous to freedom, but when he realised he had been tricked, he cried out for vengeance. Vaul finished the final blade,_ Anaris the Dawnlight_, and took it to do battle with Khaine. Though it was the greatest of swords, Khaine was the better warrior and crippled Vaul. The smith is often shown chained to his anvil, the punishment that Khaine set upon him.

Y'nnead, God of the Dead

Y'nnead is a dream, the embodiment of a possibility that has yet to be realized. Some Eldar Seers believe that when the last Eldar dies during the Rhana Dandra (the Final Battle with Chaos) Y'nnead will be born from the Warp with the strength of all the Eldar souls stored in the Infinity Circuits of the Craftworlds and the World Spirits of the Exodites. Y'nnead will then have the power to destroy Slaanesh forever in a final battle, thus correcting the mistakes which led the Fall of the Eldar and allowing the race to be reincarnated into a universe free of the taint of Chaos.

Other Eldar Gods**Kurnous, God of the Hunt** - Kurnous was the Father of the Eldar race and the companion and consort of Isha. He is often shown in conjunction with hounds, hawks, and other trappings of the hunt. Along with Isha, the goddess of the harvest, he too was imprisoned by Khaine.**Gea **- Gea was a female Eldar God that existed within the pantheon of the Eldar race. She is notable for being the consort of the twin deities Khaine the Bloody Handed God and Asuryan the Phoenix King.**Hoec** - Revered amongst the near-invisible assassins known as Eldar Pathfinders, the mysterious wandering Eldar divinity known as Hoec is said to be one with the Webway, and has walked the paths between planets since the stars themselves were young.**Lileath** (also known as **Lilcarth**),** the Maiden** - Lileath was the Goddess of Dreams.**Morai-Heg, the Crone, Goddess of Fate and Souls** - The Crone-Goddess Morai-Heg is the consort of Khaine and the third in a trinity of female Eldar Goddesses who appears as an ancient and withered creature who holds the fate of mortals inside a skin rune pouch. In Eldar myth she sought to partake of the wisdom contained in her divine blood. She manipulated Khaela Mensha Khaine to cut off her hand so that she might drink deep of her own vitae. With this deed Morai-Heg gained the knowledge that she sought, and in return, Khaine gained the aspect of the banshee. The original homeworlds of the Eldar that were lost to the Eye of Terror after the Fall became known as Crone Worlds, a reference to the Crone Goddess. The inhabitants of Craftworld Iybraesil are noted for being followers of Morai-Heg.**Cobra-God** - The Cobra-God is an animistic creature of destruction whom does not care whom is caught in his wake; he is venerated by the Exodites.**Scorpion-God** - The Scorpion-God is an animistic creature of defence, brother of Cobra; he is venerated by the Exodites.**Serpent-God** - The Serpent-God is an animistic creature of secrets who knows all there is to know in the universe; he is venerated by the Exodites.Relations With Other Races

As with most of the primary factions in the 41st Millennium, the Eldar have no particular love for any of the other major intelligent races in the universe. Though they abhor the Forces of Chaos more than any other since they have lost more than most civilisations to the predations of the Ruinous Powers, they do not particularly desire to share their knowledge or co-exist with their fellow space-faring species. They have been known to trade and have relations with the other Elder Races.

Mankind

Relations between Mankind and the Eldar were not always sour, but perhaps the current state of warfare between the Eldar and the species they derogatorily refer to as the _mon-keigh_ (literally "mammals" in the Eldar Lexicon, though with a derogatory meaning closer to "monkeys" in Low Gothic) could be blamed on the events preceding theHorus Heresy - most notably, the meeting between Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children Legion of Space Marines and the Eldar FarseerEldrad Ulthran upon the Eldar Maiden World of Tarsus during the Great Crusade. Both leaders had come in peace to discuss the Imperial Compliance of the planet and Fulgrim's willingness to ignore Imperial doctrine on the matter and leave the Eldar's Maiden Worlds unconquered by the Imperium, but the main issue that Eldrad was attempting to pursue was that the Imperial Warmaster Horus had turned to Chaos, and sought to betray the Emperor of Mankind. However, Eldrad was unaware that Fulgrim had already been tainted by contact with the Slaaneshi daemonblade that he had recovered from the world of Laeran, and the supposedly peaceful meeting soon turned into a bloody battle when Ulthran sensed that the Emperor's Children had already been corrupted by She Who Thirsts. Being that Fulgrim was unaware of the existence of a Chaotic taint on himself and his Astartes, or even what Chaos was at the time of their meeting with the aliens, the Ulthwe Eldar's actions were seen as a betrayal and great insult to the offer of friendship and peace that Fulgrim had offered them with theImperium of Man. Hence, Mankind and the Eldar have been at nearly open war since the days of the Horus Heresy.

Though they have had no love for the Imperium of Man, which they view as a brutish, repressive and extraordinarily arrogant government (though in truth no more arrogant than the Eldar themselves were before the Fall) the Eldar typically leave human settlements alone and have fought side-by-side with the Imperial Space Marines and troops of the Imperial Guard on multiple occasions, though they have been known to attack unprovoked for reasons of their own and have used other races as shields against certain threats such as the Orks. In campaigns like the Gothic War and the 13th Black Crusade, both races have been seen working together against their common foe of Chaos. In truth, though neither species will ever truly understand the other, and there are a great many differences between them, they both need the other to survive the terrible threats that face both races and they are both far more alike in their mutual arrogance and disdain for other species than either would be comfortable admitting.

Orks

As the most primitive intelligent starfaring race in the galaxy, the Eldar look down upon the Orks and all of their actions. Essentially a green wrecking ball hurling through space, the Orks destroy and loot every world in their path. This has put them at odds with the Eldar many times. However, due to their limited intelligence, the Orks have often made excellent pawns in Eldar schemes designed to save Eldar lives from another, even more potent threat from the Imperium or the Tyranids.

Chaos

As the first race most predominantly affected by Chaos, the Eldar have devoted all of their resources to battling the forces of Chaos whenever possible. This has made them temporary allies of the Imperium on occasion though such partnerships rarely last beyond the span of a few battles.

Tyranids

The Tyranids are a seemingly unstoppable force in the universe, the origins of which are still unknown. The Eldar have dedicated much of their time and sacrificed many in the fight to stem the spread of the Tyranid Hive Fleets. Though only three major Tyranid incursions have actually occurred, the universe is forever under threat from further Hive Fleet invasions. Billions on all sides were sacrificed in the fight to stem the Tyranid flow, but the Eldar are not above sacrificing entire human worlds in favor of diverting the swarm away from their own Craftworlds.

Perhaps the most notable conflict between the Eldar and the Tyranids was the bloody battle between the CraftworldIyanden and Hive Fleet Kraken, which reduced the massive Eldar cityship to mere remnants of its glory, and which was saved only through the timely intervention of the Pirate Prince Yriel and his Eldritch Raiders.

Necrons

The Eldar have much experience with these dark, evil beings since they were originally created by the Old Ones to aid them in their ancient war with the Necrons. The Eldar have been searching for ways to rid the universe of the foul Necrons for thousands of years. As a relatively recent addition to _Warhammer_ _40,000_ lore, the Necrons are a threat to all life in the universe, putting the Eldar in alliance with the Imperium once more against this foe. As usual, such alliances are fleeting and do not last beyond major battles against the Necrons.

Tau Empire_"I have followed the myriad potential futures of the Tau with great interest. Though barely even striplings compared to us, I feel a strange protectiveness towards them. In time I believe they will exceed even our greatest feats and master the darkness within their souls."_- Farseer Eldrad Ulthran of Ulthwe

So far, there have been no reports of any major contact between the Eldar Craftworlds and the Tau Empire. However it can be assumed that one of three things would happen should the Eldar and the Tau have more contact: The Tausee the Eldar as a threat to their Empire and the Greater Good, the Eldar Craftworlds come to view Tau expansionism as a threat to their way of life or the Tau offer the Eldar a place in their Empire, which the Craftworlds would view with outright scorn. As the Eldar ultimately want to re-establish their own interstellar empire, they have no desire to bow to the effectively newborn interstellar civilisation of the Tau. As such, the Tau's hopes for the Eldar would be ill-founded. Finally, the Eldar and the Tau may come into conflict because the Eldar don't believe in the Tau's overriding philosophy of the Greater Good. The Eldar were sailing the stars long before Mankind, never mind the Tau, and have actually physically interacted with their own Gods in the past. The Tau's somewhat naive pseudo-religion of the Greater Good has little appeal to the far older, more experienced and more cynical Eldar.

Etymology and Inspiration

The name Eldar is drawn from J. R. R. Tolkien's work the _Silmarillion_, where the hunter Valar Oromë discovers Elves far from the Blessed Realm of Valinor, in Middle-earth. In their own language the Elves were given the name "Eldar" (Quenya for "Star People") by the Valar Oromë, presumably for the fact their birth came in a time before the sun and the moon existed and because the elves have a particular love for the stars. The history of the Eldar in_ Warhammer 40,000_ mimics that of Tolkien's elves, to the point that they are a "dwindling race" in the game universe, as the elves were in Middle-earth's Third Age.

The inspiration for the Eldar is heavily drawn from Celtic culture, such as their largely Gaelic-influenced language (similar to the dominant Sindarin Elvish in Tolkien's works which was somewhat based on Welsh), the names of their Craftworlds, their iconography and even one of their units, which is called the Howling Banshees.

The different Eldar Aspect Warrior paths can be seen as reminiscent of the many different styles of Chinese martial arts (kung fu). The Eldar cultural arrogance is similar to the ethnocentrism displayed by the Chinese of the Ming and Qing Dynasties when they first encountered European cultures that they considered barbaric and inferior. The late nineteenth century Chinese Confucian scholar Gu Hongming, speaking to an Englishman, is quoted as saying "Why, when you lived in caves and clothed yourselves with skins, we were cultured people."

The Eldar may also be seen to borrow from Japanese culture to a lesser extent in the appearance of some of their wargear and the use of shuriken-like kinetic ammunition in their most common ranged weapons. The Eldar "Path of the Warrior" can be seen to be akin to the "Way of the Samurai", Bushido.


	5. Chapter 5

Dark Eldar

"_I am all your nightmares. I am the legends your forebears whispered of in fearful tones. Every terror you have never imagined comes from me. Look upon my majesty and weep at the terror I have wrought upon you and your kin. I am an artist, and dread is the colour I splash across the canvas of your mind._"

— Archon Anas Vaenix of the Kabal of the Sundered Eye

The **Dark Eldar** or _**Eldarith Ynneas**_ in the Eldar Lexicon are the forsaken and corrupt kindred of the Eldar, an ancient and highly advanced alien race of fey humanoids. Their armies, like their Eldar counterparts, usually have the advantages of mobility and advanced technology, though they are often lacking in resilience and numbers. The Dark Eldar revel in piracy, enslavement and torture, and are sadistic in the extreme. Dark Eldar armies make use of various anti-gravity skimmers such asRaiders and Ravagers to launch high speed attacks. They strike with little or no warning, using an interdimensional labyrinth known as the Webway to traverse the galaxy safely and far more quickly than most advanced races are able to with theirWarp jumps. The Dark Eldar are unique amongst the intelligent races of the Milky Way Galaxy because they do not live on a settled world or worlds, but rather the bulk of their population is concentrated in one foul city-state - the Dark City ofCommorragh - that lies within the "ordered" Immaterium of the Eldar Webway. The Dark Eldar are mainly pirates and slavers who prey on targets across the galaxy to feed their unholy appetites for other sentient beings' souls, a terrible desire called the Thirst, though they are sometimes used as mercenaries by other species.

The Dark Eldar are the living embodiments of all that is wanton and cruel in the Eldar character. Highly intelligent and devious to the point of obsession, these piratical people revel in the physical and emotional pain of others, for feeding upon the psychic residue of suffering is the only way they can stave off the slow consumption by the Chaos God Slaanesh of their own souls. The Dark Eldar, particularly their warrior castes, are tall, lithe, white-skinned humanoids. Their alabaster skin is death-like in its pallor, for there is no true life-giving sun within their dark realm to provide colour. Their athletic bodies are defined by whipcord muscle, shaped and enhanced until they are physically stronger on average than theirCraftworld Eldar counterparts, as the Dark Eldar prize physical and martial prowess highly. Yet for all their physical beauty, the Dark Eldar are still repugnant monsters. When viewed with the witch-sight of a psyker, the Dark Eldar's black souls are revealed, for they eternally thirst only for the anguish and torment of other thinking beings in order to fill their own infinite emptiness. Unlike their Craftworld Eldar cousins, the Dark Eldar do not integrate their still powerful latent psychic abilities into their culture, and indeed have a great disdain for psykers of any kind. This is because for the Dark Eldar, the use of psychic abilities would only further draw the attention of She Who Thirsts (Slaanesh) upon them, and their souls are already at risk enough of being devoured by the Prince of Chaos.

Origins

The Dark Eldar have fallen from true grace in the most profound of ways. Their roots as a culture lie at the very height of ancient Eldar society, when theirs was perhaps the most highly advanced species in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Eldar once boasted mastery over a civilisation that was the greatest seen in the galaxy since that of the Old Ones. The various cultures of the Eldar that exist today in the 41st Millennium are only shadows of the glory of that ancient Eldar empire.

The true origins of the Dark Eldar can be found in the Fall of the Eldar, the great cataclysm that nearly destroyed the entire Eldarrace. It was an event so terrible that not only did it kill trillions of Eldar, but it breached the dimensional barrier between realspaceand the Warp, and gave birth to the Chaos God Slaanesh.

The ancient Eldar had perfected their science and technology to such an extent that they could remake planets and quench the light of the very stars at a whim. The need for labour or hard work in Eldar society became nothing but a dim memory of a difficult past. The Eldar, arrogant in the belief that they were now the true masters of their destiny, spent more and more of their time in esoteric pursuits and entertainments intended to escape the ennui that set in over the course of their centuries-long lives of ease and comfort. The Eldar mind and psyche is a thing of duality: it can experience zeniths of bliss and nadirs of suffering far more keenly than that of the other intelligent races, including Mankind. The Eldar were capable of becoming just as irredeemably corrupt as they were of transcending their flaws and touching the divine. With so much power at their hands, the core worlds of the Eldar empire - once the height of civilisation in the known universe - became centred solely on the pursuit of individual fulfillment, desire and entertainment.

To understand the reasons for the Fall, it is necessary to know something of the Eldar mind and soul. An Eldar's mind is incredibly complex. Their senses are extremely sharp, able to perceive incredible levels of detail. Their emotions can be so strong that a human's are merely pale shadows by comparison. They are extremely intelligent; their thought processes are much faster than a human's. All of this means that an Eldar experiences the universe and all its sensations to a greatly heightened degree compared to a human.

Similarly, an Eldar's soul is much brighter in the Warp than those of "lesser" sentients like humans who do not possess such potent psychic abilities. Eldar are able to affect the nether-realm of the Warp much more than most other intelligent races. Every Eldar is a latent psychic and has the ability to become a very powerful psyker with training. It is the psychic strength of the Eldar's souls that was one of the causes of their downfall.

Before the Fall, during humanity's Dark Age of Technology, the Eldar had an immense galaxy-spanning empire comprising millions of worlds, larger and more powerful than even the Imperium of Man at the height of its power. The Eldar lived in relative peace—barbarian races such as the Orks were kept at easily manageable numbers and never had the strength to threaten the might of the Eldar empire. The humans were not yet virulently xenophobic and did not have a large interstellar domain, and the Tyranid Hive Fleets remained unknown. The C'tan and Necrons, the ancient foes of the Eldar, had been defeated long before and still remained dormant.

Life on the Eldar worlds was idyllic, with fantastically sophisticated machines that took care of all the labour and manufacturing required to keep an advanced society functioning, leaving the Eldar free to indulge in other, more aesthetic pursuits. With all menial work taken care of for them, the Eldar became indolent and decadent. They began to explore more deeply the arts of pleasure, delving ever deeper into hedonism. This descent into decadence spanned millennia. Tradition and order disintegrated as the Eldar pursued the limits of the pursuit of pleasure. Sects called Pleasure Cults were formed, dedicated to achieving the highest levels of hedonistic sensation, and their ceremonies and practices became ever more wild, eventually devolving into violence against one another and even the ritual sacrifice of their own kind. Some Eldar hated what their race had become and left the Eldar homeworlds for the unexplored and virgin Maiden Worlds, or left on the newly-constructed Craftworlds, leaving the Pleasure Cults to their madness.

Among the pleasure-seekers and the interminably curious of the Eldar were those whose pursuit of excess became ever more extreme. These included a great proportion of the aristocracy of ancient Eldar society, who possessed the wealth and time to truly explore the meanings of decadence. One by one, the leaders of the Pleasure Cults that were becoming the centrepiece of Eldar society became obsessed with their own power. They relocated their headquarters to the Labyrinth Dimension known as the Eldar Webway, for so great was their political influence that they could command the construction of entire sub-realms just for themselves. Unseen, these Pleasure Cult lords continued to grow in power and influence, initiating more and more of the ancient Eldar population into their strange and shadowy creeds of decadence.

The Eldar are the most psychically gifted of all sentient beings in the galaxy and as the corruption gradually seduced them, the echoes of their ecstasy and agony began to ripple through time and space. In the parallel dimension of the Immaterium, the Warp, the reflections of these intense experiences began to coalesce, as the shifting tides of the chaotic Empyrean can take form around the raw emotions emitted by the sentient beings of the material universe and attract even more of such similar psychic energies to themselves. The constant stream of individual selfishness and indulgence pouring into the Warp from the Eldar empire nourished and empowered that which lay within - a nascent God of pleasure and pain, content to wait and to grow.

As the Eldar empire sank into corruption and decadence, brother turned against brother in pursuit of ever more extreme and darker pleasures. Some of the wiser Eldar, however, foresaw the disaster that was approaching their society and fled from the Eldar core worlds to safety. The first of these were the Exodites, who chose to establish a network of Eldar planetary colonies known as the Maiden Worlds far from the blighted heart of the empire. Many of these Exodite colonies still exist in the galaxy, their cultures living in a symbiotic relationship with the world-spirits of the planets they call home and protect. Among the last Eldar to escape from the empire's core before the Fall were the ancestors of the present day's Craftworld Eldar. As their society collapsed into civilisation-wide insanity these Eldar recoiled in horror from what they were becoming. Realising that they stood upon the brink of destruction they bend their considerable resources to the construction of the massive Craftworlds, the graceful spaceborne cities that were the size of small moons. The Eldar of the Craftworlds retreated into asceticism and spiritual introspection, preserving what they could of their ancient ways and culture before the time of the Pleasure Cults. They left the core worlds of the Eldar empire for the dubious safety of deep space, to the laughter and contempt of those who remained behind. Some even managed to flee far enough to escape the terrible destruction of the Fall.

Meanwhile, as mentioned above, something terrible was stirring in the Warp. The long millennia of Eldar hedonism had made a massive impact in the psychic realm of Chaos. Within the Warp the decadent Eldar civilization was giving shape to a new Power of Chaos, which grew and grew over thousands of years, getting stronger and more defined until suddenly it sparked into an intelligence – a shatteringly huge and malign intelligence, with an immense and bottomless thirst for Eldar souls. This was the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Dark Prince of Pleasure, better known as She Who Thirsts to the Eldar, who see Slaanesh as inherently female.

This process lasted for thousands of years, corresponding to the historical era that was Mankind's Dark Age of Technology, although when Slaanesh finally came into being the results within the material universe were apocalyptic and sudden. As depravity riddled every aspect of Eldar society, the Pleasure Cults sought ever more violent thrills. Before long the streets of Eldar cities ran with their blood. The elegant architecture of their palaces became battlegrounds as the Eldar preyed upon each other, revelling in the cruelest of crimes. Their insanity and tainted passions poured into the Warp until it finally achieved critical mass. With an apocalyptic bellow that tore the heart out of the Eldar empire, a new Chaos God was born, Slaanesh the Dark Prince of Excess. An almighty psychic shockwave scythed across the galaxy, destroying countless billions of Eldar souls as Slaanesh's birth cries echoed through the material realm. The souls of almost every Eldar were stripped from them in an instant and devoured by the new-born Chaos God in a cataclysm of pain and terror. There were few survivors. Most were driven mad, their minds trapped half in the real world and half in the swirling insanity of the Warp. A great Warp rift was created in the material universe at the site of what had once been the epicentre of the Eldar civilisation, encompassing almost the entire Eldar empire and creating the Eye of Terror, thus marking the dawn of the era known to humanity as the Age of Strife. World after Eldar world had fallen into the Warp, to later be known as theCrone Worlds. Slaanesh gorged itself upon the Eldar's horror and despair. Unstoppable in its ascendancy, the new God consumed the ancient deities of the Eldar empire and scattered their psychic remains to the far corners of the Empyrean.

The Eldar civilisation was gone. All that was left of the Eldar race were the Exodites of the farthest-flung Maiden Worlds, the Craftworld Eldar who had travelled far enough to escape the aftershock of destruction caused by Slaanesh's birth and the formation of the Eye of Terror, and those adherents of the Pleasure Cults who were hidden in the sub-realms of the Webway. Much of the Webway was shattered into ruin by the Fall of the Eldar, but unlike the Craftword Eldar who fled the catastrophe in realspace, those Eldar who had built their own jealously-guarded empires in the Webway remained physically unaffected by Slaanesh's birth. The echoes of the new God's apoetheosis still resounded within them, but unlike their kin in realspace they had escaped destruction. In their arrogance, they did not end their quest for excess and decadent pleasure, not even for a momentary respite following the death of their empire. Repentance and atonement were meaningless concepts for a people that no longer acknowledge any limits on their actions, regardless of the consequences.

The change that was wrought upon those Eldar sealed within the Webway was far more subtle. Rather than having their psychic essences, their souls, consumed in one great draught by Slaanesh, their souls slowly drained away into the Warp, taken over time by She Who Thirsts. The Eldar hate and fear Slaanesh above all other things, for she was given life by their actions and yet she waits hungrily to claim each and every one of them, now or later. Where the Eldar of the Craftworlds learned to deny Slaanesh's hold upon them by using the mystical Spirit Stones, theInfinity Circuits and the philosophies of the Eldar Paths to safeguard their souls from consumption by She Who Thirsts, the Eldar of the Webway became exceptionally good at ensuring that other beings suffered in their place. As long as they steeped themselves in the most evil and savagely decadent acts, the Eldar of the Webway found that the curse of Slaanesh upon their race could be avoided. The agony of others nourished their diminished souls and kept them vital and strong, filling their spare frames with unnaturally robust energies. Assuming that they could feed regularly enough upon the miseries of other intelligent beings, the Eldar of the Webway became psychically immune to the passage of time. So it was that the Dark Eldar were born, a race of sadistic murderers and torturers who feed upon the suffering of others in order to prevent the slow death of their own immortal souls. Ten thousand standard years later, in the 41st Millennium of Mankind, Slaanesh's Thirst consumes them still. There truly is no escape, for the Dark Eldar have only exchanged a horrible but quick death for an eternity of infernal hunger and the infinite emptiness wrought by self-absorption.

Deep in the Webway after the Fall, the groups of Pleasure Cult survivors came together and laid the foundations of a vast new sub-realm that they named Commorragh, the Dark City. Commorragh was built on the foundation of the great port-city within the Webway of the same name that had lain outside the jurisdiction of all the Eldar authorities of their lost empire. More and more Eldar survivors from other sub-realms in the Webway began to arrive and soon added their own regions to the new realm, slowly making it even larger and more heavily populated, until today it is a vast place, an infernal city of suffering and death. To this day, the Dark Eldar raid and pillage the galaxy at large from their hidden sub-realms in the Webway, sowing as much misery and destruction as possible and stealing away millions of captive slaves to their lairs within the Dark City to be exploited for their own horrible ends. They are experts in the techniques of torture as well as mental and physical degradation, as the longer a Dark Eldar can drag out the torture of a slave the more psychic nourishment he can take from him or her. A Dark Eldar who has recently fed upon the suffering of others shines with a cold and startling aura of power, his physical form restored to beautiful, youthful perfection even as his soul rots within its pristine shell. A Dark Eldar who is not allowed to partake of such energies for long enough will become a physical shadow of his former beauty, desperately hunting for a taste of misery to stave off the gnawing thirst in the depths of his withered soul.

The Rise of Asdrubael Vect

Over the millennia, Commorragh grew from its shrouded beginnings into a galactic nightmare, its expansion driven largely by the machinations of one being, Asdrubael Vect of the Kabal of the Black Heart, who rose from slavery to become the true Overlord of the Dark City.

Four thousand standard years after the Fall of the Eldar, in the time that Mankind calls the 35th Millennium, Commorragh underwent its greatest ordeal since its founding. The slave Asdrubael Vect had risen, through pure guile and murderous ambition, to become the Dracon of what he later named the Kabal of the Black Heart, when the elite forces of the Imperium of Man mounted a full-scale invasion of the Dark City. At that time Vect, the hidden architect of this time of strife intended to cement his own rule, was opposed at all turns by the most influential of the Dark City's noble factions, the Houses Xelian, Kraillach and Yllithian. By the time the human invaders had been repelled, the powerbases of these houses were in ruins, their Archons slain. It was not long before Vect and the more meritocratic Kabals had replaced them as the source of ultimate power in the Dark City, just as he had planned. The seeds of the Imperial invasion were sown in the region of the galaxy called the Desaderian Gulf. This area of wilderness space was well-known among the human starfarers of the Segmentum Tempestus for the number of spacecraft that had disappeared within its confines. General Imperial practice was to avoid it at all costs. Unknown to the Imperium, there existed a vast portal into a main arterial of the Webway within Desaderian space, shielded by holofields that made it appear to be nothing more than a shimmer in the starlight, perhaps a result of gravitational lensing. Behind this portal lurked the pirate fleets of Commorragh, waiting for unwary prey.

The Dark Eldar's noble houses preyed upon Imperial shipping lanes only rarely in order to escape retribution; hence the missing ships were always considered acceptable losses or written off as bureaucratic errors of the Administratum. Vect's first move was to increase the frequency of these piratical raids tenfold. He made it his Kabal's priority to capture every Imperial Navy warship and invade every human world within reach of the Desaderian portal. He tore apart the Imperial Guard Regiments garrisoning the planets of the Desaderian System, devastated their fortifications and disappeared with his living bounty into the depths of the Dark City, leaving nothing but utter ruin in his wake. This campaign saw the Kabal of the Black Heart grow rich in plunder and souls, though Vect's detractors thought him a fool for antagonising the massive Imperial war machine.

With its usual ponderous, bureaucratic slowness the Imperium eventually reacted to the disappearances in the Desaderian Gulf. A Strike Cruiser belonging to theSalamanders Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes was close enough to investigate. It was patrolling the edges of the Gulf in search of the sacred artefacts and relics of their Primarch Vulkan. Captain Phoecus of the Salamanders ordered his ship deeper into the Desaderian Gulf. After a short but violent exchange with Vect's Kabalite fleet, Phoecus' Strike Cruiser _Forgehammer_ was crippled by Haywire Bombs and transported through the Desaderian portal into the heart of the Dark City. The furore that resulted from this audacious capture set the spires of High Commorragh aflame with new intrigue. A Space Marine Captain was a great prize indeed, for such an individual could withstand extreme and prolonged mental and physical torture before divulging his vital secrets about Imperial defence. Before long, Vect found his Kabal's fleet in the Desaderian Gulf dwarfed by the armada of the Archon Lord Xelian. The_Forgehammer_, still rendered impotent by Vect's Haywire field, was confiscated by Xelian, taken to High Commorragh and analysed by a long dissection process.

In his arrogance, Lord Xelian had not reckoned with the resourcefulness of the Space Marines trapped within the stricken Strike Cruiser. The ship's vox communications network had been shorted out by the Haywire field, but unknown to Xelian there remained a more pervasive method of communication available to the Astartes. Captain Phoecus' close friend, the gifted Librarian Hestion, had sent a psychic request for aid as soon as the starship's systems had been disabled. Hestion acted as a living beacon to the rest of the Salamanders Chapter, a beacon now trapped within the spires of Xelian's realm in the Dark City. When Lord Xelian sent the elite of his warrior court to bring the Space Marines to his torture chambers, they were met with far sterner resistance than anticipated. The Dark Eldar found it easy to carve through the hull of the strike cruiser and gain entrance to its dark corridors, but overpowering the Space Marines proved impossible. Lit only by the flashes of Boltgun fire, a desperate battle took place within the hull of the Forgehammer until Astartes and Dark Eldar blood had mingled upon its hull plates. Xelian was quick to realise that he had underestimated his victims. He returned the salvage rights for the Astartes starship to the Kabal of the Black Heart, appearing generous but actually intending to seize the Space Marines once the Black Heart had suffered the losses in taking them captive. Vect readily agreed, forming small strike forces of all those warriors in his Kabal whom he suspected of disloyalty and sent them to face the Strike Cruiser's defenders piecemeal. Vect's Kabalite Warriors, triumphant on dozens of worlds, marched into the _Forgehammer_ without fear, but the battle lasted for days.

Xelian was happy to let Vect drive his so-called Kabal to destruction, believing the Kabal's Dracon to be a fool for not attacking with all the force at his disposal in a single, massive assault. Vect played a waiting game, feeding the disloyal elements of his Kabal to the guns of the Space Marines to buy time and even employing Commorrite mercenaries with well-known ties to Xelian's court, all of whom were soon swallowed by the violence within the human Strike Cruiser. On the sixteenth day of the siege, the skies above High Commorragh suddenly broke open. The Salamanders Chapter had received the coordinates that had led them to their beleaguered Battle-Brothers from the Librarian Hestion's psychic broadcasts. The Desaderian portal had mysteriously been left fully operational, its guards slain and its controls locked so that it could not be closed.

The full fury of the Imperium of Man thundered from the crackling jade-cloured Webway portal directly above Archon Xelian's personal spire. Through it came starships bearing the heraldry of not only the Salamanders but also the badges of the Howling Griffons and the Silver Skulls Chapters of Space Marines. Two dozen Strike Cruisers, each appearing like a chunk of Gothic architecture reshaped for war, hammered though the wide-open portal into the shadowy skies of the Dark City. At their heart was the great Battle Barge _Vulkan's Wrath_, an immense spacecraft with broadside batteries that could flatten whole cities. Its prow was a vast jutting ram that ploughed straight into the spire where Xelian stood, crushing it like a hammer driven into a priceless sculpture.

The Dark Eldar overcame their surprise quickly. From nearby Port Shard came hundreds of exotic craft, each a needle-like splinter next to the slab-like Imperial vessels, but no less deadly for that. Voidraven Bombers andRazorwing Jetfighters careened out of their towering hangars like bats from a cave, descending in swarms to attack each Astartes Strike Cruiser. Though many were destroyed by the Imperial cruisers' broadsides, others systematically targeted the larger ships' guns with focused Void Lance fire and sustained hits from their Disintegrator Cannons. The _Vulkan'_s _Wrath_ was struck by thick blasts of electromagnetic force produced by Port Shard's salvage spars, rendering the majority of its weapons systems useless. One by one, the Imperial ships' guns were silenced. But these were Space Marines, and they were nothing if not resourceful. Ejecting from each Strike Cruiser came Drop Pods, fired with such force that they were projectile weapons in their own right. The Drop Pods hurtled down, smashing through Dark Eldar fighter craft and Commorrite starscrapers alike, each containing a squad of Space Marines who deployed upon impact with their weapons blazing. They left pure ruin in their wake as priceless Eldar statues shattered and the spires of the Dark City fell.

The Astartes' counterattack robbed the Dark Eldar of the initiative. Within only moments of the Drop Pod assault, the Space Marines had established a perimeter in the obsidian-paved streets of the Kraillach Quarter. Though they took constant fire from Kabalite Warriors and Scourges that flew through the dark skies above, Astartes Power Armour proved to be an effective barrier to the Dark Eldar's splinter weaponry. Yet it was not long before more of the Dark City's denizens joined the fight, drawn to violence and death like sharks to blood. Massed swarms of skyboard-mounted Hellions and Reaver Jetbikers swooped down to rake and tear at the Space Marines, who returned fire, literally, with their Promethium-fueled Flamers. The half-daemon Mandrakes and Raider transports loaded with Dark Eldar Warriors assaulted the Space Marines with claws, knives and Splinter Pistols. Battle was joined from one side of High Commorragh to the other and the streets seethed with violence. Entire sections of High Commorragh burned as the invading Space Marines cut down or incinerated each new breed of horror that assaulted them. Word spread quickly through the Dark City of the human invasion and high up in the arenas, the gladiators of the Wych Cults mobilised for war.

The Space Marines within the city were 500 strong, almost half the size of a full Chapter, and they maintained a defensive perimeter throughout the Kraillach Quarter. High Archon Kraillach himself led a massed charge against the Astartes, intending to crush the invaders that were destroying his personal fiefdom. Yet Kraillach's rampage was ultimately halted by a "stray" blast from a Dark Lance that vapourised him where he stood.

As the _Forgehammer_ lay shackled by electromagnetic force high in the spires, the battle in the skies of the Dark City intensified. Xelian's last command had been to destroy the captive human ship no matter the cost, for if mere humans recovered his prize, the Archon's authority and that of his fellow noble-born peers would be shattered forever. Flights of winged Scourges armed with Haywire Blasters and Heat Lances began to systematically destroy the captive ship while a fleet of Ravager gunships forced the Space Marines who sought to rescue the vessel's Battle-Brothers back into cover. Then, in a storm of light generated by their teleportation technology, Terminatorsfrom the Salamanders' 1st Company teleported directly onto the hull of the _Forgehammer_ and returned fire. The Scourges were driven back and Captain Phoecus seized his chance. His men emerged from cover as a single force, sending a Krak Missile soaring into each of the nine towering spars that held his craft captive with their beams of electromagnetic force. Miraculously, each missile triggered a chain reaction of explosions, and the burning spars crashed down into the streets below. The Librarian Hestion summoned a psychic storm of his own, a raging inferno in the shape of a flaming drake that tore the Ravager gunships out of the sky one by one. The _Forgehammer_ had been ravaged by the Dark Eldar assaults, but it was free at last from the Dark City's clutches. With a roar, the Strike Cruiser began to ascend into the sky and freedom.

Far below, the Space Marines fighting in the Xelian Quarter were completely encircled as the full weight ofCommorragh was pressed against them and warriors from dozens of noble houses joined the defence of the city. Yet the Space Marines' objective had been achieved, for the _Forgehammer_ was free. A single curt comm-signal was sent and within mere moments, the main bulk of the Space Marines in the Dark City teleported away in a brief burst of light. Those that had been cut off from the main assault gave their lives to buy their brethren time or else were paralyzed by Dark Eldar hypertoxins and taken away to later fight and die as warrior-slaves. Confusion reigned as the Haywire fields that had shackled the Imperial spacecraft were disengaged one by one. The Battle Barge_Vulkan's Wrath_, now joined by the badly damaged _Forgehammer_, fired its retros and disengaged itself from the ruins of what had been Archon Xelion's pride. The vast starship's engine blast flattened spires and starscrapers alike before the Space Marines made their escape. The entire Astartes fleet then passed through the still-yawning Webway portal above High Commorragh and escaped triumphantly into realspace.

In the aftermath of the Imperial invasion, Commorragh changed forever. The power vacuum left by the vanquished noble houses of High Commorragh was quickly filled by Asdrubael Vect and his jubilant Kabal of the Black Heart, who had proven their superiority to their rivals in the crucible of war. In the years that followed, Vect played politics like a true Machiavellian master of intrigue, forever asserting the meritocracy of the Kabals over the ancient aristocracy of the Eldar noble houses. So it was that the Kabal of the Black Heart rose to ascendancy over the Dark City in place of the old nobility and Archon Vect's new position as the Supreme Overlord of Commorragh and the Dark Eldar race was sealed.

Dark Eldar in the Calixis-Koronus Region"_They are a scourge upon our galaxy, the most vile and sadistic of all our xenos foes, and a peril to any who would ply the void in search of profit or gain. Whatever happens, should the shadow of their ships darken your path, pray you die fighting at the helm of your vessel, lest 'fortune' favours you and they take you alive..._"— Magos Domos Agnelain, Explorator

The Calixis Sector and Koronus Expanse are regions that have some significance to the Eldar, and while it has been many millennia since they have had any major presence there, the worlds of that great frontier are still laced with many thousands of webway passages and tunnels connecting worlds and systems. Today, these tunnels are twisted, stretched, and torn by the psychic pressure of the Warp storms dividing the Calixis Sector and Koronus Expanse. While the mysterious rites of the Harlequins long ago sealed many of these passages, others still remain open to the tides of the Warp, infested with vile and ephemeral creatures.

This region of damaged tunnels is centred across the Warp Stormknown as the Screaming Vortex. The Vortex is home to teeming hordes of daemon-worshippers and mutants, living and dying at the whims of warlords and sorcerers intent on murder and subjugation in the name of their dark gods. While this a ready source of slaves and victims for the raids of the region's Kabals, it is a realm largely inhospitable to the Dark Eldar, so strong is the presence of She Who Thirsts within the storm. However, suspended at some point between the Screaming Vortex, the Koronus Expanse, and the webway is an island of relative stability where numerous groups of Dark Eldar have formed a twisted haven. Here floats the Nexus of Shadows, a Dark Eldar outpost built upon an ancient and massive technological relic.

Three major Kabals dwell in the tunnels and passageways that cross the Calixis Sector, the Koronus Expanse, and into the Screaming Vortex. The foremost of these, at the heart of the Nexus, is the Kabal of the Splintered Talon. The others, the Kabal of the Shadowed Thorns and the Kabal of the Crimson Woe, are of a more mercenary inclination due to their lesser status, often selling their murderous skills to other races in exchange for resources or opportunities to grasp at power. The Kabal of the Crimson Woe operates in the Calixis Sector more than in the Koronus Expanse, in part to avoid directly competing with the Kabal of the Shadowed Thorns and thus drawing their ire. Numerous other groups exist alongside these, from the Cult of the Withered Blade, which controls the Bloodspine Pits on the Nexus of Shadows, and The Sutured Helix, a coven of Haemonculi that operates from the Nexus of Shadows, to numerous smaller factions that raid and scavenge for scraps of the might and prestige.

The Dark Eldar operating near the Nexus of Shadows are frequently on the move, either carried within fleets of ships or travelling in smaller groups on light skimmers through the winding and impossible labyrinth of the webway, returning to the Nexus of Shadows only periodically to trade their cargo of tormented victims for supplies and to replace slain warriors. These itinerant raiders often cross paths with pirates and reavers of other species, particularly the Chaos-aligned flotillas that hail from the Screaming Vortex and isolated bases like Iniquity. A select few of these have been shown the location of the Nexus, so that they may trade in slaves, dark lore, and abhorrent technologies, but these are relatively rare.

The Dark Eldar are a plague upon the Koronus Expanse raiders, slavers, pirates, and even Rogue Traders suffer at their barbed lashes and blades. Any who cross the Maw and sail the void of the Koronus Expanse learn to fear the wicked silhouettes of their ships and their seemingly endless cruelty towards all life, including their own. Only vigilance and firepower keep the worst depredations of these terrible raiders at bay, though from the dens of Footfall to the commerce halls of Port Wander there are countless tales of crew lost and ships savaged in their sudden attacks. Within the Calixis Sector, the Imperial Navy keeps the Warp routes and sector worlds protected against the worst of these raids, and while some outposts and lone vessels still disappear at the hands of the foul xenos, most citizens sleep soundly, never even knowing that such a depraved species haunts the stars above their heads.

In the Koronus Expanse it is different, as that lawless place has neither a fleet capable of guarding the uncharted wastes nor a tightly controlled network of worlds that can call upon one another in times of need. The Expanse is a playground for the Dark Eldar, where along with the myriad of other alien menaces they can raid worlds and take ships with relative impunity, slipping away into the night from whence they came. The power of the Dark Eldar is compounded by the fact that no one knows precisely where they come from or where they go, nor can they explain the aliens' uncanny ability to appear from nowhere and then vanish with their stolen cargos of goods and slaves just as quickly. Some Rogue Traders believe there must be a Dark Eldar world somewhere in the Expanse from which they launch their raids, though where exactly it is and how it could have evaded detection for so long remain a mystery that has yet to be unravelled.

Salaine Morn - Archon of the Kabal Of The Shadowed Thorns"_There is no good story without a villain. I shall provide you with an antagonist beyond your imaginings or even your comprehension, and as you die you will curse my name exquisitely._"— Drecarus, Master of The Sutured Helix

The Gaelan Sphere, upon which the Nexus of Shadows was built, is an ancient relic of a long-forgotten age of technology. The size of a small moon, covered with towers and antennae, the sphere was crafted around a solid core, the remnants of some mineral rich asteroid that its automated systems are slowly eroding away as it adds more and more levels to the sphere. Neither the Gaelan Sphere's alien inhabitants nor those few explorers from the Imperium who have had a chance to study it know its true purpose. How the sphere came to enter the webway is also a mystery. Abandoned for untold ages, the sphere could have drifted through a web-gate or even been drawn towards one by the ancient programs and protocols of its cogitators seeking to study a breach in the webway that it perceived as a celestial phenomenon. Alternatively, it is possible that some unknown force moved it into the webway for some inscrutable purpose. Once it entered the webway, the sphere spent aeons drifting from one region to another before becoming trapped in a confluence of ancient forces and alien powerfields. Now, it floats in a relatively stable position, more debris of a forgotten age of enlightenment.

It was Salaine Morn and her Kabal that first rediscovered the Gaelan Sphere and decided to put it to use. After being exiled from Commorragh, the Archon spent years wandering the webway with her fleet, raiding worlds and looking for a place to claim as her own. The sphere, with its well-hidden location and ancient technology, presented the perfect place for a new home. Unfortunately for Salaine, the sphere's defences and legions of servitor guardians were too numerous and powerful for her Kabal alone to overcome. Thus, Salaine forged an alliance with Zaergarn Kul and his Kabal of the Splintered Talon, and together they purged the city of its ancient human defences, destroying that which they could not control and sealing away the areas that they could not inhabit.

Even though their forces had secured a landing zone and deactivated the aging orbital defences, it was to take years for the Dark Eldar to carve out the areas where they would build their city. As more Dark Eldar came to the Nexus, new sections would be cleared of their ancient automated defences. Often the Dark Eldar would drive thousands of slaves into an area to identify these dangers, or simply to exhaust a turret's ammunition so it could be destroyed. Other xenos races were also allowed to settle in the Nexus as part of trading missions, though these aliens had to clear their own areas for inhabitation. The lasting result of this wanton conquest by the Dark Eldar and their allies is that many areas of the Nexus still show signs of battle, and the stripped remains of the combat machinery of the sphere is a common sight along its shadowed streets. Occasionally, the Nexus' old defenders rear their heads once again, but the Dark Eldar usually put them down swiftly.

Almost immediately after the arrival of the Dark Eldar and its establishment as a port, the Nexus began to operate as a hub for trade and a base for raiding. Close to the Koronus Expanse and the Calixis Sector, it opened up fresh opportunities for slavers and worlds that before had been out of reach or too dangerous to raid using the fractured remains of the webway. The Nexus of Shadows quickly grew in size and wealth on the backs of its slaves, despite the fact that most Dark Eldar of Commorragh at least openly shun the cursed place and the outcasts who live there. The xenos of the Koronus Expanse and the renegades of the Screaming Vortex have no such compunctions, however, and have found the Nexus to be a useful place to trade and congregate, a place far from the reach of the Imperium and utterly hostile to its agents. Salaine welcomed such factions into her city on account of the wealth and influence they offered, as well as the added protection it afforded her against those who would try and take the city from her. Unfortunately for Salaine, it was not an outside force or an alien that was to oust her from power. In the end one of her own, Zaergarn Kul, usurped her, and exiled her once more into the webway before she could do the same to him. For many of the inhabitants of the Nexus this change in power meant little, especially for the slaves, to whom one Dark Eldar Archon is much the same as another.

Salaine Morn intentionally projects a presence that is both evasive and unmistakable; her dread majesty is as hard to put into words as it is to ignore. Appearing at once menacing and tempting, the Archon catches many of her foes off-guard, uncertain of the obfuscated nature of this ancient being. Morn is several thousand years old, though only she knows for certain how long she has been alive, and has seen and done much that would long haunt the nightmares lesser beings. Like all Archons, she is possessed of a deadly martial prowess, but her true weapon is a mind finely-honed by the lethal intrigues of Commorragh's high society. She finds it utterly distasteful, then, that she and all those she commands are exiles from the Dark City and now even the Nexus of Shadows. At her grudging command, the warriors of her Kabal have turned to mercenary work, selling their efforts to lesser beings as part of a plan to regain the power she once possessed. On the rarest of occasions, she deigns to speak to these prey-creatures herself.

Unique Dark Eldar Technology

Close-Combat Weapons

The Dark Eldar employ a number of hand-held weapons designed to eviserate, lacerate and incise at close quarters. Although varying widely in design and use, all employ a similar technology in their construction. They are built from very lightweight materials, with blades honed to a mon-molecular edge capable of cutting through even Ceramite armour plating when sufficient force is employed. Weapons incorporating powerful shock fields have also been recovered by Imperial forces, and these devices utilise an energy generation and transference system as yet beyond the comprehension of human Tech-Adepts. The following are the most common close combat weapons employed by the Dark Eldar:

**Agoniser** - An Agoniser is an extrememly sophisticated close combat weapon that acts as a Power Weapon and drives a victim's sensorium haywire, causing excruciatingly severe pain as a victim's nerves burn out through constant overstimulation, producing exquisite agony. Though Agonisers come in a variety of forms, the most common are whips or barbed flails.**Bloodstone** - A Bloodstone is a rare and exotic weapon forged from the broken Soul Stone of an Eldar Exarch. It can be used in close proximity to an enemy, unleashing a single pulse of baleful energy that will boil their blood.**Cluster Caltrops** - Cluster Caltrops serve as an antipersonnel weapon made up of two or more sharp nails or spines arranged in such a manner that one of them always points upward from a stable base in the form of a tetrahedron. Caltrops serve to slow down the advance of foot soldiers and mounts. Caltrops are also used against wheeled vehicles with pneumatic tires. This weapon is most commonly employed by Dark EldarReavers who use these small but effective antipersonnel weapons against enemy troops as they swoop past on their deadly Jetbikes.**Crystal Gauntlets** - Crystal Gauntlets are extraplanar in origin, able to mysteriously sprout and regrow a deadly profusion of blades. These deadly weapons are often employed by Dark Eldar Wyches in melee.**Demiklaives** - A Demiklaive is a variant of the deadly Klaive. These vicious Power Weapons are finely honed to a mono-molecular edge and can either be wielded separately or clasped together to form a much larger blade that confers an even deadlier strike against an unfortunate victim. These weapons are commonly employed by Dark Eldar Incubi.**Djin Blades** - Djin Blades are Power Weapons that usually take the form of blades of polished crystal with a scowling bestial face engraved upon their hilts. Each blade has a bloodthirsty and resentful sentience of its own, usually that of a former rival bound eternally to the service of the blade's owner.**Electrified Shardnet** - An Electrofied Shardnet is a specially crafted and weighted net that can be thrown over an enemy in order to ensnare them. The combined weight and the painful electrical shock of the net is both painful and debilitating. When successful, the victim is then attacked with an extendable twin-bladed impaler while they are entangled, ensuring they cannot escape alive. Another tactic that is often used is to ensnare an enemy's weapon in the shardnet and pull it out of their grasp, leaving the opponent defenceless. This weapon is commonly employed by Wyches.**Electrocorrosive Whip** - An Electrocorrosive Whip is a deadly Power Weapon whose lash is a tongue of venom-soaked polymer with a high-yield dynamo embedded in its hilt. Its touch is painful and debilitating in the extreme, sapping the strength and robbing the will to fight. This weapon is commonly employed by Wyches and Beast Masters.**Flesh Gauntlet** - A clawed glove fitted with far too many syringe-like spines and serum-filled vials, the flesh gauntlet can inject potent electrosteroids that force rapid, unnatural, and uncontrollable growth. Its victim will literally outgrow his own skin, bursting apart in a welter of streaming, heaving matter, and leaving little more than a pile of twitching overgrown muscle, ruptured skin, and shattered bone. The deadliness of the weapon is hardly offset by the fact that many models require a short period of time to prepare a new batch of electrosteroids after each use.**Fusion Pistol** - The Fusion Pistol is a compact hand-held Melta Weapon whose elegance belies its potency.**Hellglaives** - These long, double-ended polearms are the favoured weapons of Hellions, who employ the sharpened hooks on each end to pull themselves around corners and past obstacles, while the broad heads and symmetrical balance of each hellglaive serves to aid a Hellion's stability in flight. As weapons, they are no less useful — a hellglaive's balance and razor-sharp blades allow a Hellion to strike down multiple enemies with every pass, if he is sufficiently skilled.**Huskblade** - A Huskblade is a Power Weapon that appears as if made of cracked and pitted bone, a husk blade leaves faint smoke trails as it passes through the air, and instantly evaporates any moisture that comes into contact with its blade. Victims slashed or stabbed by such a blade are reduced to shrivelled corpses that turn to dust in moments, and even those lucky enough to only suffer a glancing hit find much of their vitality dragged away by these deadly weapons.**Hydra Gauntlets** - These outlandish weapons are the defining tools of Hydrae, and the bladed gauntlets they wield are said to have been forged beyond the petty confines of reality, in some strange and distant pocket of existence. The blades on each gauntlet are grown from a strange crystalline substance that continually renews itself, sprouting new blades to replace those shorn off or blunted. Hydra gauntlets are only ever equipped in pairs by Hydra Wyches, and though one could theoretically be used alone, it would be both uncouth and far less effective. Hydra Guantlets are commonly worn by Dark Eldar Wyches.**Impaler** - An impaler is unremarkable in itself, a simple twin-bladed shortspear that can be rammed deep into the body of a victim. Impalers are seldom used alone, and most of those who wield them are Yraqnae, who use them in conjunction with shardnets.**Klaives** - Klaives are great Power Swords favoured by the deadly Incubi. These weapons are considered to be a masterpiece of balance and form and the one true weapon of true Dark Eldar warriors, though Klaivex war-leaders sometimes favour variants such as the more versatile Demiklaives.**Mindphase Gauntlet** - Less a weapon and more a control device, mindphase gauntlets can stop a creature in its tracks with a single touch. A fleeting moment's contact is sufficient for the gauntlet's discharge to paralyse muscle and dull the mind.**Razorflail** - Razorflails are lightweight swords composed of a number of interlocking blades joined by a cable. At a moment's notice, these blades can be separated, turning a sword into a many-bladed lash. In the hands of a skilled wielder, these are almost impossible to parry and can be woven past almost any defence. Razorflails are commonly wielded in pairs, the Wych surrounding herself with a swirling wall of deadly blades as she dances across the battlefield.**Shardnet** - Shardnets are a wire mesh covered in tiny barbs that dig into flesh and tear with every moment of struggle, while simultaneously administering electrical shocks that render a victim incapable of self-defence and cause him to jerk and twitch against the barbed net.**Stunclaw** - A Stunclaw is a close-combat weapon that confers additional strength on its bearer and can also be used to grapple to snare and entrap an enemy leader. This weapon is commonly employed by Hellions.**Venomblade** - This weapon is a common sign of wealth and power amongst the Dark Eldar aristocracy. Each venomblade has thousands of microscopic pores that continually exude a distilled cocktail of hypertoxins. The slightest scratch from a venomblade is sufficient to fell even the mightiest of foes.**Wych Knife** - At first glance, there is little to distinguish these blades from a commoner's knife or a Kabalite Warrior's flaying blade. However, subtle details of their construction, such as the pattern of serrations, the precise curvature of the blade, or the placement of perforations, influence their balance and the cuts they inflict so that in the hands of an expert they can inflict grievous wounds and find the weaknesses in all but the toughest armour.Long-Range Weapons**Disintegrator Cannon** - Utilising tiny quantities of plasma stolen from enslaved suns, the disintegrator cannon is a sophisticated weapon, remaining cool to the touch even after a sustained barrage in spite of the boiling energies within. Disintegrator cannons are most commonly encountered mounted onto vehicles like Raiders and Ravagers.**Heat Lance** - The long-barrelled Heat Lance is a powerful device that combines the focus and precision of laser weaponry with the searing potency of melta weaponry, creating a weapon able to melt armour plate from further away than most comparable Meltaguns, but with the fine precision of the most finely-honed Eldar laser weapon.**Hexrifle** - Thousands of years ago, the Dark City found itself host to a plague of a quite unusual nature. While the plague itself has long since been stopped, samples of the disease still exist in phials within the laboratories of Haemonculi, to employ as a weapon against their enemies. Each hexrifle is unique, created for an individual Haemonculus to deliver this potent and exotic plague in battle, but all function in essentially the same way. Crystalline cylinders containing the tiniest quantity of the disease are fired from the rifles, shattering upon impact and exposing the target to the plague. For all but the hardiest of victims, this momentary exposure is sufficient for the plague to begin its vile work, turning flesh and bone into glass and leaving a transparent, flawless statue where once was a living creature.**Liquifier Gun** - This baroque collection of pipes and tubes projects a torrent of highly corrosive fluids that can melt through anything it touches. Typically carried by Grotesques, Wracks, and other servants of the Haemonculi, these weapons are most commonly fuelled by the corrosive ichor that passes for blood in such creatures. The devastation wreaked by a liquifier gun's noxious payload depends entirely on how much of the fluid splashes across a target. While not strictly a Flame weapon, a liquifier gun functions in almost exactly the same way, including a chance of being set aflame — in truth, this represents a quantity of the corrosive liquid lingering on the target and continuing to eat away at flesh and armour, and thus deals damage with a toxic quality, in place of the normal damage from fire.**Phantasm Grenade Launcher** - Wealthy Dark Eldar warriors often wear specially modified backpacks that can hurl a volley of small, disc-shaped grenades from twin tubes. These grenades are made from a highly reactive substance that, upon contact with the air, dissolves into clouds of psychotropic gas so potent that to even catch a whiff of it fills the mind with horrific nightmares and delusions. This weapon is often employed by Dark Eldar Kabalite Warriors.**Shredder** - The shredder unleashes an expanding mesh of monofilaments with miniscule barbs along their length. The mesh entangles the victim in an invisible net that slices apart the target as it struggles.**Stinger Pistol** - A wicked weapon with a cruel purpose, a stinger pistol delivers horrifyingly deadly toxins via the thin needles that it fires.Heavy Weapons

Like all Eldar technology, the heavy weaponry that is employed by the Dark Eldar utilises an order of technology far different from that employed by the other sentient races of the galaxy. The following is a list of the most common heavy weapons employed by the Dark Eldar:

**Dark Lance** - The Dark Lance is comparable in its role to that of a standard issue Imperial Lascannon. Its primary function is to destroy heavily armoured targets. However, the Dark Lance does not employ standard laser technology, but instead fires a stream of "Darklight." This dark matter substance works by reacting catastrophically with its target, producing a blast that is more than capable of destroying any vehicle regardless of the thickness of its armour, or totally vapourising a foot soldier.**Disintegrator** - A Disintegrator employs a more unstable form of "Darklight" dark matter and can be used in several firing modes, unleashing a single ball of ravening energy or a lethal salvo of powerful energy bolts.Special Weapons

There are a number of weapons entirely unique to the Dark Eldar, although they draw upon the same technology found in the weaponry of the Craftworld Eldar. The following is a list of special weapons commonly employed by the Dark Eldar:

**Darklight Weapons** - Darklight Weapons are crafted in the weapon shops of Commorragh that are infamous for their ability to cheat the natural laws of physics in order to design ever more efficient ways to kill. Blasters, Blast Pistols and Dark Lances epitomise this, for they do not employ standard laser technology but instead fire a stream of what is, for want of a better term, "darklight." The origin of this substance is unknown, although some amongst the savants of Commorragh claim that it is a form of dark matter that has been recovered from the event horizons of black holes, Warp Storms, and other celestial phenomena of great magnitude. Darklight works by reacting catastrophically with its target, producing a blast that can bore a massive hole in a vehicle regardless of armour, or vapourise a foot solider in an instant. Even to perceive a beam of darklight without the correct protection leaves permanent slash-scars upon the retina.**Destructor** - The Destructor fires a stream of virulent organo-acidic compounds which can melt through armour and sear flesh. The effects of these toxins can inlcude blood vessel explosion or implosion, pharyngal contraction, extensive haemolysis, skeletal disintegration, sclerotic corrosion, intercostal spasm, hyper-reacted thermoreceptors and chemoreceptors, Eustachian damage, retinal scarring, cardiac and respiratory atrophy and aqueous humour deprivation. In simple terms, the victims are hideously blinded and disoriented, their skin feels as if it is burning, their respiration and even the circulation of their blood is erratic and extremely painful.**Haywire Blaster** - Haywire Blasters are long-barrelled weapons that siphon the electromagnetic energy crackling around Commorragh's highest aeries to later release it in a terrifyingly powerful burst. A well-aimed Haywire Blaster can cripple an enemy tank's or aircraft's control systems in a single shot.**Haywire Grenades** - Haywire Grenades are used for disabling or crippling enemy vehicles. They send out a powerful electromagnetic pulse that shorts out and destroys electrical circuits.**Mindphase Gauntlet** - A Mindphase Gauntlet is a special close-combat weapon that acts as an advanced neural controller that saps both the strength and will of an enemy. It can stop a rampaging foe in his tracks with a single touch.**Shredder** - The Shredder is a hand-held pistol that unleashes a web or mesh of monofilament wire, often with minuscule barbs or serrations along its lines. This mesh entangles the victim, slicing them to pieces as they struggle. Its dense cloud is also highly effective at finding weak points in a vehicle's armour, but is thankfully short-ranged.**Splinter Weapons** - Splinter Weapons fire shards of splintered crystal using a powerful magno-electric pulse. These shards are covered in incredibly virulent and fast-acting toxins the better to ensure a painful death. The favoured armament of the Kabalite Warrior is the Splinter Rifle, often fired on the move from the ballustrade of aRaider or Venom transport. The Splinter Pistol, its handheld cousin, is an elegant sidearm beloved of assassins and street fighters across the galaxy; though it is designed for precision short-ranged shots, the toxins inside its reservoir pod are no less deadly. Larger variations of Splinter Weaponry are often employed, such as the Shardcarbine, popular amongst the winged Scourges, and the Splinter Cannon, a heavy weapon able to mow down entire squads at a time.Dark Eldar Equipment**Clone Field** - In place of coherent fields of energy, a clone field projects holographic duplicates of the wearer, all identical in aspect and moving in perfect and lifelike synchrony. Only through trial and error can the true wearer be identified, and few combatants have the time to find the real threat amidst a swarm of falsehoods.**Ghostplate Armour** - Constructed of strange resinous materials and shot through with pockets of lighter-than-air gases, each suit of ghostplate armour provides considerable protection while weighing far less than any comparable panoply. The expense of a single suit of ghostplate is such that only the wealthiest and most influential Dark Eldar can obtain it. Each suit is further reinforced by a force field.**Gnarlskin** - The Dark Eldar Haemonculi and their hideous, fleshy creations have toughened, scarred hides that have been subjected to so many brands, burns and abrasions they have become leathery and resistant to enemy blows.**Incubus Warsuit** - All Dark Eldar Incubi wear a close-fitting suit of ritual battle armour that can turn aside all but the most well-placed blows.**Kabalite Warrior Armour** -These suits of segmented plates are commonly worn by Kabalite Warriors of all kinds, from the half-born murderers who have dragged themselves up from the depths of Commorragh to the sneering Trueborn in their palatial spires. Each suit of armour is held in place by a variety of barbs and hooks that dig deep into the wearer's flesh and play against his nerve bundles. His senses heightened by his own pain, the simple act of donning this armour prepares him for battle.**Shadow Field** - A shadow field is an arcane Dark Eldar device that creates a defence that is virtually impossible to pierce. Projecting a dark miasma of energy around the wearer, the field is proof against almost any attack, and the warrior within cannot be easily targeted. However, should one manage to penetrate this miasmic aura, the field's instability causes it to collapse almost immediately.**Soul-Trap** - Though Soul-Traps vary in size and appearance, from folding pyramidal prisms to jewelled skulls engraved with vampiric runes, they all have one ghastly function - to capture the soul of a powerful enemy within its confines and empower the bearer with the stolen energies.**Vexator Mask** - A Vexator Mask often takes the form of a delicate skein of bone and skin adorned with runes of confusion and illusion. It projects the image of the viewer's most trusted friend, beloved ruler, or loved one, often buying the wearer a second of precious time. An enemy will balk at the sight of such highly personal illusions and may not attack the bearer - until it is too late.**Webway Portal** - The Webway Portal is a portable form of the portals used to link together places via theWebway and is used by Dark Eldar raiders to unleash their attacks into realspace.**Wychsuit** - Wychsuits and similar garments are little more than flexible bodysuits, adorned in an eclectic manner with armoured plates and reinforced panels. Those worn by Wyches often provide protection only to the side of their bodies that they habitually turn towards the enemy, while Hellions commonly wear armoured collars and vambraces, and many Reavers favour masked cowls and heavily padded shoulders. Regardless, it is difficult to strike a Dark Eldar warrior past even the tiny amounts of armour that these suits provide.**Xenohide Clothing** - Crafted from the flayed hides of arena beasts or slaves (living or dead), these garments are common clothing amongst the Dark Eldar of the Nexus of Shadows. The toughened nature of the material helps ward off would-be murderers and other common hazards of the Bonespires and the Shadow Arteries alike.Drugs and Poisons**Combat Drugs** - Though they drastically shorten the life expectancy of those who take them, drugs and stimulants are in widespread use throughout Dark Eldar society. The fashions and the vagaries of supply and demand commonly influence which ones are used during a given battle or realspace raid, but certain drugs remain popular amongst the inhabitants of Commorragh and the Nexus of Shadows. Dark Eldar combat drugs are designed to enhance Eldar physiology, and do not function in the bodies of any other creature.**Accelerai** - This stimulant alters the warrior's adrenal glands, producing a substance that is far more potent. Harvested from the brain of a small, multi-legged, and extremely aggressive predator found on the ruined shell of the _Light of Terra_ and certain Space Hulks that drift through the Koronus Expanse, Accelerai accelerates the user's attacks to a blistering tempo.**Corpse Obmulen** - First found growing amidst the corpses of fallen warriors during the taking of the Nexus of Shadows, Corpse Obmulen appears to be a cousin of the better-known Dusk Lotus and seems, against all odds, to have been on the Gaelan Sphere longer than the Dark Eldar. Since their arrival, however, the blood-drinking plant has flourished, and covers many pits of discarded corpses with an ashen veil. Though inherently toxic, Corpse Obmulen is a popular additive to steroidal compounds that saturates muscle fibres and makes them superhumanly resistant to the stress and tension of use, allowing the warrior to exert himself to an extreme level for a protracted period of time.**Shudderstep** - Tailored from a number of incredibly dangerous ingredients, including grass harvested from specific Yu'Vath grave worlds and miniscule quantities of the stasis venom of the Ariadne Helspider, Shudderstep is designed to hyper-stimulate fast-twitch muscle fibres. A dose of Shudderstep enables a warrior to run at incredible speeds.**Murder's Boon** - Distilled from the cranial fluid of slaves who have been poisoned with a combination of other drugs and toxins including Corpse Obmulen and Liquid Agony, Murder's Boon amplifies a warrior's killer instincts.**Eviscerine** - Eviscerine is a derivative of the rare but seemingly uninteresting viperleaf found on certain worlds within the Koronus Expanse. Though The Sutured Helix does not share exactly how it transforms this barbed vine into a drug as effective as Eviscerine, the raw material nonetheless commands a high price on the Nexus of Shadows. Cold Trader groups such as the Consorvana Ring exchange vast quantities of viperleaf for xenos artefacts, and know better than to ask why the devious aliens want this particular plant. Once refined into a useable drug, Eviscerine is a favourite of warriors who prefer to kill at close range. Heightening the adrenaline sensitivity of perception centres of the brain and the conductivity of synapses and nerve fibres, a dose of Eviscerine makes a warrior more able to perceive and avoid the attacks and defences of his enemies.**Soul Echo** - The coalesced essence of a being who has been tortured not only unto death but far beyond it, Soul Echo is almost pure pain, containing the last tormented gasp of a spirit bound in eternal agony.The Toxic Spectrum

The Dark Eldar are experts in the many applications of poisons and toxins. Entire districts of Commorragh are given over to the manufacture of substances that can kill in countless thousands of different ways, and many an aristocrat's court contains a master poisoner whose gifts can transform the merely agonising into the unrelentingly lethal. Many weapons employed by the Dark Eldar exude, are impregnated with, or otherwise employ potent hypertoxins, and most warriors have their own favourite cocktail of poisons. The toxic spectrum is something that all Dark Eldar appreciate with an artist's insight, and personal aesthetics are as important as effect when it comes to poisoning a rival, enemy or prey-beast. The following is the most common poisons employed by the Dark Eldar:

**Essence of Perfect Vitriol** - Perfect Vitriol is the universal solvent, a corrosive agent capable of dissolving absolutely everything. Created by the Stryxis for reasons they refuse to explain and traded to the denizens of the Nexus of Shadows for use in their arenas and shadowy plots, no substance is proof against this liquid's fury, and it must be stored in magnetic suspension because no material container exists that can hold it. Not to be stymied in their quest to weaponise everything in their grasp, the Dark Eldar of the Nexus of Shadows cleverly use fields and other exotic distribution systems to imbue their blades and projectiles with the vapours produced by this substance without degrading their own equipment too quickly for it to be of use.**Final Breath** - A targeted paralytic agent that is derived from a plant native to Burnscour and brought to the Nexus of Shadows accidentally along with several beasts for the pits, Final Breath causes rapid respiratory shutdown, swiftly making it impossible for the target to breathe. The Dark Eldar first discovered the effect of the plant when a number of slaves tasked with cleaning the pen of a Clawed Fiend were discovered dying after inhaling its deadly pollen. The Dark Eldar of the Nexus of Shadows were most impressed by the agonising death that this humble plant had inflicted upon their slaves, and so they immediately set about finding a way to turn the plant's toxic pollen into a weapon.**Heartfire** - Heartfire is a substance produced by the razor-spined fungi that inhabit certain parts of the Gaelan Sphere, and is found in the greatest concentrations in those specimens that have made their home in the shafts that house the coolant for many of the sphere's mysterious processes. Apparently a defence mechanism against predators, this poison coats the spines and self-replicates within a victim's body, polluting his blood with a kinetically unstable chemical that may ignite at any moment. Vigourous motion is often sufficient to set the poisoned blood off, consuming the victim with a fire within his own veins and arteries, burning up the oxygen in his blood.**Liquid Agony** - Popular amongst nobles of the Kabal of the Splintered Talon involved in realspace raids against particularly valuable targets and those fighting rivals at home alike, Liquid Agony is a potent neurotoxin that amplifies nerve conductivity to extreme levels, turning even the weight of clothing and the caress of the air into torturous sensations. Liquid Agony is based upon the viscous bodily fluids of the Sandsnapper of Vaporious, a rare, segmented serpent that inhabits the deep deserts. Some within the depths of the Nexus of Shadows imbibe tiny quantities of Liquid Agony to heighten the impact of sensations, but overdoses are all too common and leave the wretched beings in a state of perpetual agony just long enough for a hungry soul to find the source of the screams and drink deep of the self-inflicted pain.**Nightmare Philtre** - This toxin creates terror in its victims, nothing more or less. Though the exact composition of this poison is a jealously guarded secret of The Sutured Helix, dark whispers tell of how Archon Salaine Morn commissioned the Haemonculus Drecarus to create it shortly after her forces slew a Rak'Golraiding party that had simultaneously attacked the human settlement she was in the midst of pillaging. It is said that she brought one of the creatures' corpses back to the Haemonculus as a gift to entice his services, and he repaid her with this serum of hell-dreams some days later. By chemically influencing the "fight or flight" reaction, and then triggering it, an overwhelming sense of panic and dread afflicts the victim, without obvious cause or reason — something that is arguably more terrifying than being afraid of anything specific. In many cases, the horrified psyche actually tries to invent some fearful apparition to justify the terror, a feat of self-delusion that only serves to act as a beautiful accompaniment to the Dark Eldar feeding upon this unreasoning panic. Hard-won experience has taught the Dark Eldar that this particular poison does not have an effect on all of their foes - even the most concentrated dose does not influence a Space Marine in any way, and it seems to merely enrage Orks.**Sanguine Exodus** - This toxin causes the victim to begin exsanguinating rapidly, his blood pouring from every wound as if seeking to escape from his body. Sanguine Exodus in part on the saliva of the Culamia Bloodsucker that is all too common on the world of Burnscour and certain other Death Worlds in the Koronus Expanse, and has become popular amongst the Wyches of the Withered Blade Cult, as it allows them to kill with even greater elegance and conservation of motion.**Vitae Rebellion** - A cruel and savage toxin, Vitae Rebellion is a genetic serum of incredible potency created in the laboratories of The Sutured Helix and sold to Dark Eldar nobles on the Nexus of Shadows who desire a certain explosive flair to their kills. Vitae Rebellion aggressively transforms the biochemistry of its victims, transmogrifying critical fluids into chemicals and compounds that react violently with one another. The end result is gruesome and spectacular, as the victim detonates in a shower of mutated gore.Dark Eldar Combat Doctrine

The raiding parties of the Dark Eldar are able to suppress their treacherous natures only in pursuit of power, spoils and slaves. When the Kabals of Commorragh gather in large numbers, they darken the skies of unsuspecting worlds with their razor-edged anti-gravity craft and fall upon the unwary populations of the galaxy with extraordinary speed and their characteristic sadism.

Every Dark Eldar is fundamentally defined by his or her innate selfishness. Personal power, the pursuit of comfort and the gratification of their dark desires are the only things which truly hold value for the Dark Eldar. They take no pride in the achievements of others within their race and measure every endeavour's worth in how it contributes to their own self-interest. The need for survival in a hostile galaxy is the only thing that bonds the Dark Eldar together as a species and thus even in combat they are not normally inclined to cooperate with one another beyond the bare minimum required.

Yet, on occasion, an opportunity may present itself that even the greatest of the Archons is forced to admit cannot be seized by a single Kabal acting alone. This could be an Imperial Hive World whose teeming masses of humanity are ready to be culled, an Eldar Craftworld drifting unpowered and vulnerable to a slave raid, or a newly discovered intelligent alien species unaware of the dangers which haunt the galaxy. Such targets represent more than a single Wych Cult or Kabal could hope to assault on its own without suffering crippling losses, but the potential rewards are so great that they prove willing to share the spoils with others within the Dark City.

Dark Eldar society is splintered and lacking in any true unity. The raiders of the Dark City owe their first allegiance to themselves and then to the Kabal or Wych Cult to which they belong. Each of these factions constantly compete with one another in the pursuit of their divergent goals and will happily betray or murder any of its allies of convenience once they have outlived their usefulness. Amongst the Dark Eldar, only the most devious and ruthless survive for long and any alliance or coalition that forms does so only either out of greed or fear of its individual participants' rivals.

The lure of thousands of souls to be enslaved and tortured and immense amounts of wealth to be plundered can draw Dark Eldar together to face a large or very well-defended target. Power is the only truly palpable currency within Commorragh and a successful attack on a target of unusual magnitude can secure extraordinary wealth and authority for those who were daring enough to carry it off. At the same time, no self-respecting Archon or Succubus would willingly stand by while his or her rivals benefit from such a cooperative venture. As such, when large-scale assaults are in the offing they can grow to unusually large proportions as jealous Dark Eldar nobles pledge their support for the raid, whilst all the time plotting ways to double-cross their newfound allies and seize all the plunder and prestige for themselves.

While it is greed that forges these massive Dark Eldar assaults, it is fear that keeps them cooperative. The Dark Eldar are defined by their fear of many things, including death, loss of status and the plots of their rivals. An unusually large war fleet allows the Dark Eldar to hunt much larger and more powerful victims. However, just as a raid that earns victory returns with great wealth and the envy of all Commorragh, a failed raid will lead to a loss of standing amongst the participants and possible enslavement by their rivals who will immediately move to capitalise upon the raid leaders' perceived weakness. By involving all of one's rivals in the attack, the risk of failure can be shared by all. Additionally, the nature of Commorragh's vicious politics means that when a Dark Eldar faction seeks to move against its rivals, the blow needs to be decisive, overwhelming and completely successful. Any less will result in the unleashing of civil strife that will see entire Cabals and Wych Cults destroyed, thousands murdered amongst the spires of the Dark City and slavery and torture for almost all as the enemies of both sides seize their own advantage. Because of the terrible risks involved with such reprisals, the fear of these consequences keeps most of the double-dealing and treachery within a large war fleet to a minimum - until the participants return with their spoils to Commorragh.

The Flaying

Dark Eldar raiding forces never attack the foe directly, but use their speed, mobility and the advantage of surprise to attack swiftly and then withdraw, with the intent of slowly bleeding the foe dry. As a result of this tactical doctrine, Dark Eldar forces never gather in a single place that would leave them open to an enemy counter-attack. This also allows them to attack the foe where he is weakest. During large battles, the Dark Eldar favour a style of combat that might be considered a "wave attack." The Dark Eldar in large war fleets assaulting well-defended targets organise themselves into successive waves made up of units with differing tactical capabilities and destroy the enemy in a series of separate but linked sequential assaults. Each wave will target a specific type of enemy unit or will pursue a specific tactical objective, which weakens the foe's defences just in time to face the next Dark Eldar assault wave. After several such assault waves, the enemy forces' defences are stripped away until only the weakest units are left to be ripped apart in the final assault. As a result, the Dark Eldar refer to this combat doctrine as "The Flaying."

By attacking the most dangerous enemy units with the lightning-fast assault that only the Dark Eldar are capable of, the Dark Eldar are able to create the opportunity for their other units to move into position and attack the survivors. The faster vanguard waves buy the time needed for the slower units of a Dark Eldar raiding force to outflank the enemy and deliver the _coup de grace_. An example of The Flaying proceeds as follows:

**Wave 1: Splinter Raid** - Striking without warning, a Splinter Raid comprised of a single Archon and his bodyguard of Kabalite Trueborns on a Raider, 2 Reaver Jetbike squads and 3 other squads of Raiders attack the foe from out of the sky after emerging from a Webway portal, destroying and pinning those enemy troops that present the gravest threat.**Wave 2: Strike from the Shadows** - In the second wave, 2 squads of Scourges drop out of the sky and use their Dark Lances to target the vulnerable rear armour of enemy armoured vehicles, while 2 squads ofMandrakes appear from the shadows themselves to assault enemy infantry unexpectedly who are taking cover from the Scourges.**Wave 3: Mounted Kabals and Cults** - A much larger wave of swift-moving Dark Eldar troops, comprising an Archon and his bodyguard of Kabalite Trueborns on a Raider, 2 squads of Raiders, a squad of Hellions, aRavager and an entire Wych Cult transported by a Raider, swoop in to engage the survivors of the earlier waves' attacks, and in particular this wave targets enemy command units.**Wave 4: Kabals and Cults on Foot** - By the time the fourth wave of The Flaying breaks upon the foe, the slowest elements of the Dark Eldar war fleet have had time to join the attack, and this wave includes 2 squads of Kabalite Warriors, 2 squads of Wyches and a pack of Warp Beasts led by a Beastmaster. This wave moves in for the kill on the ground and catches the enemy defenders between their own advance and the Dark Eldar elements already engaged from the sky, crushing the enemy in a classic hammer-and-anvil movement. Once the defenders are defeated, the torture and culling of the population into hideous enslavement will begin.Culture

Dark Eldar soon learn to fight with every weapon at their disposal in order to ensure their own survival, primarily against the machinations of their own kind, but also the other major races of the Milky Way Galaxy whom they raid often for slaves. No distinction is drawn between the genders, for an individual's skill and cunning is far more important to the race than sheer physical traits such as height and gender. Their senses are keen to the point of paranoia, their eyes and long tapered ears always alert to the slightest movement or disturbance that portends betrayal and death. In the Dark City, the unwary rarely survive for long among their treacherous brethren.

While their countless generations of conflict and internecine strife led the Dark Eldar to develop better reaction speed and greater overall physical strength than the other factions of the Eldar race, the innate psychic abilities of the Dark Eldar have atrophied. To channel the psychic energies of what is essentiallyChaos within Commorragh would invite disaster, for the use of Warp energy would draw the attention of Slaanesh, She Who Thirsts, the eternal nemesis of the entire Eldar race. As a result, the use of psychic abilities or sorcery within the Dark City is one of the only activities truly forbidden to the Dark Eldar.

Though it is manufactured rather than psychically grown from the hardened substance of the Warp like the wraithbone implements of the Craftworld Eldar, the Dark Eldar's weaponry is just as technologically advanced as that of their more benevolent counterparts. When it comes to war, the Dark Eldar are veritable artists. their technology refined to the point that some of its effects appear as nothing less than magical to less advanced species likehumanity. Their infinite-if infinitely dark-imaginations and sheer skill have led them down a sinister path-their favourite weapons can set every nerve ending afire with pain, darklight beams, whips that bleed acid and eldritch soul-traps. The Dark Eldar are so confident of their own abilities that their lightweight suits of body armour incorporate bladed plates not only for protection, but also to provide them with yet another weapon to inflict pain. The warriors of Commorragh are well-versed in the physiology and anatomies of all the other starfaring races of the galaxy, knowledge that is used to inflict the maximum amount of pain, suffering and death.

Though they turned their backs upon the mortal universe millennia ago, whenever the Dark Eldar emerge from their pocket dimension they revel in their superiority to their prey. They rarely deign to sully their tongues with the primitive languages of the other races, instead using translator technology on the rare occasions that some form of communication is actually necessary. The warrior Kabals strike swiftly and without warning from portals opened within the Labyrinth Dimension of the Webway, or disappear like wraiths when the enemy resistance becomes too difficult to overcome. The strike forces of the Dark Eldar, despite their own treacherous natures, are well-honed machines in combat. Raids are planned meticulously by the Archons and Succubi that lead them and hidden routes through the Webway are opened in readiness for the attack. Only the most capable Dark Eldar warriors are recruited for each incursion into realspace, for to fail in such an invasion is to bring one's own entire Kabal that much closer to annihilation in the byzantine politics of Commorragh. Working together ensures that not only is the greatest amount of suffering inflicted upon the forces of realspace but also that the greatest number of victims can be taken back to the Dark City. Personal vendettas are engaged once more only after all of the captives have been divided, for over all other things, the Dark Eldar must have fresh souls to keep themselves from the clutches of She Who Thirsts. The Kabals regularly launch fresh piratical raids into realspace and there is much to be gained for an individual Dark Eldar for being part of such an effort-the thrill of hunting the lesser mortals of the universe, the chance to personally capture new slaves which adds to their personal wealth and the joy of unbridled destruction for its own sake. Upon the Kabal's triumphant return to Commorragh, thousands of the captives will be traded as currency, put to work in the infernal depths of the weapon shops, rendered down in flesh-troughs or tormented until their deaths, that happy release drawn out for as long as possible so that the Dark Eldar can draw even more psychic sustenance from their suffering.

To the Dark Eldar, the sweet nectar of horror and suffering is as pleasing as the act of murder itself. They relish breaking the bodies of their slaves, but prize even more the process of crushing the mind and the spirit, for nothing is more gratifying to a Dark Eldar than securing true and willing dominion over an individual who formerly resisted them. They drink in every nuance and every inflection of pain until their captives gibber and plead remorselessly for death - a mercy that the Dark Eldar rarely grant easily or quickly. Dark Eldar, like most Eldar Kindreds, make use of advanced technology, including anti-gravity devices, dark matter weaponry, nanotechnology and psychic artifacts. While Dark Eldar do make use of psychic devices, they do not any longer use psychic powers themselves because of the danger that interacting with the Warp brings for those whose souls are desired by Slaanesh. Psykers are treated as playthings in Commorragh, and given the twisted, sadistic nature of the Dark Eldar, this necessarily involves pain and torment for the psyker.

Over time, the Dark Eldar begin to suffer more and more from the Thirst. They develop an all-consuming and ever-increasing need to drink the souls of other beings. It is postulated that the cause of this is the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Great Enemy of the Eldar, who leeches the soul-essence of the Dark Eldar while they still live because of their pursuit of the hedonistic and sadistic activities that strengthen the power of the Dark Prince. Dark Eldar "drink" the souls of other sentient beings to stave off this leeching - perhaps by sating the thirst of Slaanesh, or perhaps by replenishing the essence of their own souls with that of the consumed one. Slaanesh will also consume the souls of Dark Eldar whole should they die. Dark Eldar are long-lived but not immortal; drinking souls has a rejuvenating effect that reverses aging, thus Dark Eldar need not fear falling into the clutches of Slaanesh due to death from old age, if they have a constant supply of souls. The usual source of these souls are those of the many captives taken as slaves during Dark Eldar raids.

Dark Muses

As far as the Dark Eldar are concerned, the Eldar Gods died in the Fall and they despise them for it. That the Gods had become so weak that they could be consumed by the ascendancy of Slaanesh indicates that they never deserved to exist in the first place. The exceptions are Khaela Mensha Khaine, the Eldar God of War who is still held in high regard in Commorragh and the lesser powers known as the Dark Muses who are the embodiments of selfish vice and whose clandestine worship by the Pleasure Cults contributed to the demise of the Eldar Gods. TheDark Muses are truly powerful Dark Eldar from ages past who have essentially become folkloric figures of reverence, much like the Imperial Cult's saints. Many epitomise a particular form of vice, whose worship and practice weakened the Eldar Gods and so helped to bring about the Fall. Favoured by assassins and murderers is the Dark Muse Shaimesh, the Lord of Poisons, the treacherous brother of Saim-Hann the Cosmic Serpent. The courtesan elite of the Cult of Lhamaea pay homage to Lhilitu, the Consort of the Void, whereas powerful Archons are more likely to follow the tenets of Vileth, a being synonymous with the immense arrogance so often displayed by the Dark Eldar. Before they enter combat, many traditionalist Wych Cults invoke the Red Crone Hekatii, or make sacrifices to Qa'leh, Mistress of Blades. It is believed by many Dark Eldar that their current Supreme Overlord, Asdrubael Vect of the Kabal of the Dark Heart, may one day join the ranks of the Dark Muses, though given his ability to cheat death again and again, this may be an honour long in the coming.

Forces of the Dark Eldar**Commanders**Archon

An Archon is the leader of a Kabal, the organisation that serves as the heart of the standard Dark Eldar raiding force as well as the Dark Eldar's primary political unit within the Dark City. The Archons of the Dark Eldar Kabals are the true lords of Commorragh. They sit at the apex of the Dark Eldar hierarchy that controls the Dark City and the Labyrinthine Realm of the Dark Eldar's portion of the Webway. Each wields enough political influence to collapse portions of realspaceinto the Warp, stall the progress of an Imperial Crusade or take the population of entire worlds as slaves. The overlord of a Kabal is always a potent foe on the battlefield, but he has attained his position not merely through martial prowess in the arts of war and violence but through consistently emerging as the victor in the most difficult game of all - the byzantine intrigues that govern all things in the heart of the Dark City. Though every Archon is a conceited, solipsistic megalomaniac convinced of his mental and physical superiority over all other beings, he will retain his position as an overlord of Commorragh for only as long as he can stave off the endless coup and assassination attempts of his rivals, enemies and his own Dracon lieutenants. One false move in the upper echelons of the Dark City is almost inevitably fatal, and so all Archons have an uncanny ability to predict the motives and schemes of others and take great delight in turning their rivals' traps against them in bloody and often spectacular ways.

The endless ambitions of their underlings keep an Archon's paranoia as sharp as their own blades, and so it is in the service of treachery that all Archons truly excel, with their strategies stretching across millennia as centuries-old plots come to fruition. It is said by some that the Archons of the Dark Eldar could teach even Tzeentch, the Lord of Change, a thing or two about plotting for the long term. Some of the Archons known as the Lords of Twilight, who govern from the highest spires of Commorragh, even claim to have seized their thrones in the times before the Fall of the Eldar. These eldest of the Archons view the rest of their species with contempt; as little better than squabbling children. The Lords of Twilight do not suffer fools willingly. A single misstep in protocol may rouse an Archon to murderous wrath. In matters of maintaining their Kabal's hierarchy, Archons have been known to even prefer solutions that leave everyone less well-off if only to spite them.

Yet revelling in the depths of suffering and madness for an eternity eventually extracts a price. Over the long Terran years that they have held the reigns of power or clawed their way up to hold their lofty positions, the Archons of the Dark Eldar have enjoyed the pain of others for so long that only a true atrocity invigorates them. Archons regularly lead full-scale planetary raids for their Kabals, as drinking in the agony of entire planets is the only way they can regenerate themselves. Thousands of slaves must be sacrificed for the eldest Archons every night and this still may not be enough to make the oldest and most corrupt look youthful once more. As a result, elder Archons usually cover their black-veined faces with masks. Some Archons' masks are stylised and beautiful; others are bloody, alien and terrible, fashioned from the flayed flesh of their rivals' faces. When the time comes to offer battle, an Archon will first stop at his weapons museums, savouring the process of selecting which of the baleful technologies of the Dark City - Soul-traps, Agonisers, and Shadowfields - he will use to visit terror and pain upon the unwitting. The Archon's most favoured retainers and pets, each of whom specialises in its own preferred form of visiting death and pain upon others, accompany him into combat. Few mortals have ever seen a Dark Eldar Archon in combat - and kept the tongue in their mouths to tell the tale.

A Kabalite overlord surrounds himself with retainers and personal bodyguards at his court. Depending on an Archon's personality, this court can be comprised of a highly eclectic group, but is usually drawn from among the following types of beings:

**Medusae** - Medusae are visored slave-beings used to record the roiling emotions of the battlefield. However, these creatures, usually humanoid slaves with psychic ability, are actually only the physical hosts for the alien entities of the Immaterium that are the true Medusae. These creatures are empathic parasites and in their true forms look like a collection of brains and spinal cords layered one atop another. In their natural state they float through the Warp like jellyfish, a form of psychic plankton who feed on daydreams and nightmares. Medusae can latch onto a host that intruded into their realm, absorbing their emotions directly and providing a portal intorealspace. Though meeting the gaze of a Medusae's host can cause immediate emotional haemorrhaging, these hybrid beings are extremely valuable in Commorragh, for they can absorb and store extreme sensations for the Dark Eldar to enjoy later. Consuming one of the Medusae's brain-fruits brings back all the exhilirating emotions of a raid or other experience as if it was happening once more.**Ur-Ghuls** - Dark Eldar Archons maintain all manner of deadly xenos creatures in their courts, from worm-like Haemovores to greater Shaderavens, whose croaks and caws drive those who hear it insane. Though innumerable numbers of such hideous beasts prowl the dark ways of Commorragh, it is the Ur-Ghul that is the most frightening, a blind but dexterous troglodyte that originated on the world of Shaa-dom among its haunted and abandoned ziggurats. Once one of these whip-thin horrors gets the scent of prey in its rows of quivering, dripping scent-pits, it will not stop hunting that creature until either it or its prey has fallen.**Lhamaeans** - An Archon may keep many strange humanoid beings as his courtesans, but the mysterious Dark Eldar sisterhood known as the Lhilitu are coveted above all others, for not only are they imaginative and passionate lovers but they are also masters of the arts of poison. Descending from the original Cult of Lhamaea, they draw from the knowledge of Shaimesh, the Father of Poisons, one of the Dark Muses. The presence of a Lhamaean in an Archon's court ensures his Kabal with a supply of the most virulent toxins which she will share with her Archon before each raid into realspace. It is said that even a kiss blown upon the wind by a Lhamaean courtesan can kill hundreds in its deadly path.**Sslyth** - As true Dark Eldar inevitably make extremely poor bodyguards as a result of their innately self-interested nature and penchant for treachery, most Archons employ the more reliable alien mercenaries who inhabit the Dark City to protect them from the constant coup and assassination attempts. Though Dark Eldar bodyguards can be found among every intelligent race of the galaxy, the most favoured are the Sslyth, massive serpent-bodied xenos whose race fell to the temptations of unbridled excess and the worship ofSlaanesh many millennia ago. Since they possess two sets of arms, Sslyth mercenaries can wield enough guns and blades to easily counter any would-be assassin or usurper. Some Imperial scholars have noticed the unusual similarity of the Sslyth to a xenos race known as the Laer who were supposedly exterminated by theEmperor's Children Legion of Space Marines at the end of the Great Crusade in the early 31st Millennium. These creatures were nearly identical to the Sslyth and were also worshipers of sensual excess whose homeworld of Laeran was responsible for the initial corruption of the Emperor's Children and their PrimarchFulgrim by Chaos. What the connection might be, if any, remains unknown at this time.Succubi

The Succubi, also sometimes called Archites, are the ruling elite of the Dark Eldar Wych Cults. Extraordinarily beautiful and possessed of an elegant but deadly grace, they are born to the fury of battle and stride through its chaos surrounded by coteries of their lethal Wyches who seek out worthy alien opponents for their mistresses to kill. Every Succubus is famed across Commorragh for the precision and artistry of her kills. Their every motion is an entrancing sight, their serpentine grace almost hypnotising the viewer as they flow like a lethal work of art towards their victims. The Succubi are the true celebrities in the gladiatorial arenas of the Dark City, and when they are in the heat of combat they enjoy a jealous envy from their peers that is as close as the Dark Eldar can ever get to veneration or admiration of another being.

The Succubi are collectively called the _ynnitach_ in the Eldar Lexicon, the "brides of death." Every Wych Cult is governed by 3 Succubi who collectively lead it in the form of a triune council. However, only one of the three actually rules the cult, whilst the other two simply try to outdo each other in the gladiatorial arenas in the hopes of increasing their power and popularity with the general populace of the Dark City. Competition among the Succubi is fierce, though any disputes between them are far more likely to be concluded through an artful decapitation or the twist of a poisoned blade than by the skillful political scheming preferred by the Archons. Succubi are vain to the point of obsession and with good reason, for the arena crowds desire not only the bloody spectacle of vicious combat but also slaughter that is aesthetically pleasing. Wyches with one too many scars have often found themselves facing unbeatable odds in an arena match simply for the crime of no longer being physically perfect enough for the jaded Dark Eldar crowd's taste.

Only those Dark Eldar Wyches who possess both deadly combat skill and the allure of physical perfection ever join the ranks of the _ynnitach_. A Succubus will do almost anything to preserve her stunning beauty, including feeding a multitude of lesser warriors to a gruesome death so that she may feed upon their fear and anguish to regenerate herself and present a more youthful, lithe appearance to the arena crowd upon her entrance into the fight. Yet, though each Succubus is a beauty to the eye, their hearts are cold, cruel and dispassionate and a psyker who observed a Succubus with his Witch-Sight would likely see only a grey and shrivelled hag rather than a lush temptress of the arena. The greatest of the Succubi seek through the art of death to transcend the brute violence of the arenas and become living avatars of the act of death, hoping to follow in the wake of the Dark Muses and become revered as the embodiment of a particular type of murder. Currently, the greatest of the _ynnitach_ include the murderously amorous Helica Venomkiss, the famously bad-tempered Yctria the Flayer Queen and Lelith Hesperax, who is admired for once decapitating a dozen rival Wyches with a single pirouette of her graceful body.

No Succubus' position can be secure without regular demonstrations of her extraordinay skill in battle. As such, the Succubi often take the lead during the Dark Eldar's raids into realspace, not only to take their share of the plunder and slaves, but also to seek out champions of the lesser races and defeat them to showcase their own skills. Though the Dark Eldar generally look upon Mankind with utter contempt for what they perceive as its weakness as a species, a Succubus would gladly duel a Chapter Master of the Adeptus Astartes, as such a kill would carry respect even in the Dark City. Similarly, it is not unusual for a Succubus to have claimed similarly gruesome trophies from an Ork Warboss, a synapse creature of the Tyranids, or, the most coveted of all, an Autarch of theCraftworld Eldar. Each such kill is an opportunity for a Succubus to prove her superiority and maintain her position, so the more witnesses to these duels, the better. Succubi wear the same high-necked Wych Suits as their subordinates, and they are often armed with a close combat bladed weapon in one hand and a finely-crafted Splinter Pistol in the other. Some Succubi also make use of Plasma Grenades for crowd control during realspace raids.

Haemonculi

Horrific and insane flesh-sculptors who have lived within the depths of Commorragh for many Terran centuries, if not millennia, theHaemonculi, the Lords of Pain, are master torturers, the Dark Eldar's greatest connoisseurs of pain and terror. To pass the long centuries they compose loving symphonies of agony from those unfortunate enough to be held captive in ther dungeons. Even other Dark Eldar secretly fear the Haemonculi, for they can reshape not just the body but also the soul. The Haemonuli are organised into units called covens that are integral to Commorrite society since they are the true masters of the Dark Eldar's necessary regenerative processes as well as of torture, but they remain the embodiments of terror and paranoia even for others of their species. All know that to anger one of the Lords of Pain is to end up as the subject of one of their horrific tapestries of agony. Haemonculi specialise in body modification and flesh-sculpting and they love to work with a new "canvas" of flesh. If their client wants barbed quills added to his shoulders, the scaled face of an alien reptile, or the eyes of a Viridian Wraithspider, no request is too difficult or bizarre for a Haemonculus to fulfill.

How a Dark Eldar becomes a Haemonculus is unknown. They are all of an ancient age, even for Eldar, and their withered and horrific appearances speaks of a Dark Eldar so old they have passed beyond the ability to regenerate a youthful appearance no matter how much of others' torment and agony they immerse themselves in. It is possible that the oldest of the Haemonculi, known as the Haemonculi Ancients, contain among their numbers those individuals who inaugurated the very first Eldar cults of pleasure and pain before the Fall, but this also remains unknown, as all Haemonculi physically alter themselves to the point that they barely even resemble other members of the species they mockingly still call their own.

While the physical modifications will differ from Haemonculus to Haemonculus, representing their personal tastes and particular brand of insanity, they are always attenuated and twisted in form. Their wan, pale-skinned frames do not have a spare ounce of flesh upon them, and their waists are devoid of internal organs to better present what they view as a fashionably disturbing facade. Some Haemonucli place their intestines, lungs and heart within a powerfully-muscled piece of additional tissue that sprouts from their shoulders and serves as a repository for stimulants and other alchemical mixtures as well as boasting secondary limbs of mechanical or biological origin. Others replace their blood so that searing ichor or even a potent molecular acid now runs through their modified veins. Their spines have been elongated so that from the lower back, their vertebrae meld into prehensile bone-tails that can lash out at their victims. From their backs emerge horn-like protrusions of bone that frame the Haemonculus' head like an organic rack. These racks are hung with special syringes that channel their noxious concoctions directly into their spinal sump.

As they are for all purposes functionally immortal, the Haemonculi do not pursue the hurried, frenetic pace of the younger Dark Eldar. They move with an unlovely grace, often held aloft by powerful anti-gravity suspensor crystals. Others can slither along the ground like nightmarish serpents using their bone-tails. Patient fiends, they know that the manufacture of a truly perfect death takes time. As the millennia pass, many Haemonculi become ever more deranged and obsessive. One Haemonculus might only dine upon the left hands of his victims, while another may only drink from a fluted glass filled with the tears of children. Having long since transcended notions of wealth held by even other Dark Eldar, Haemonculi particularly prize the acquisition of unusual alchemical ingredients, such as the heart of a Judge of the Adeptus Arbites or the distilled physical essence of a once-proud Imperial Planetary Governor. The former may elicit the stout flavour of pure resolve; the latter the foolish thrill of vain-glory.

In battle, the Haemonculi see combat as yet another canvas upon which to exercise the skills of the true artist of pain. They use extreme wargear that often takes the form of an unusual biological or chemical weapon, such as a compound that allows them to cause uncontrollable tissue growth with a single touch or to remove all water from their foes' bodies in an instant, causing their dried, dessicated corpses to drop to the ground before they are even aware of what is happening to them. A Haemonculus usually drifts across the field of battle using his suspensor crystals with a magnificent if macabre elegance, providing the gift of a gloriously agonising death to one combatant after another. In the rare instance that a Haemonculus himself should die, he will go quite willingly into the void with a hideous smile etched upon his gaunt features. Every Haemonculus knows that he will soon return to seek a fascinating and vicious revenge. After all, for these foul beings, death is just the beginning...

**Elites**Incubi

The Incubi (sing. Incubus) are an order of Dark Eldar very similar to the Aspect Warriors of their Craftworld counterparts, as the Incubi train for combat and combat alone. Warriors of the highest calibre, the Incubi dedicate themselves to perfecting the killing stroke. Despite their unusual ascetism for a Dark Eldar, no shred of true virtue exists within their black souls, for though they seek perfection, their only true desire is to take other lives as often as they can. Eveything about an Incubus bleeds menace. His armour is spiked and segmented and his horned helmet is framed by a pair of razor-sharp blades. He walks with the grace of a stalking sabrecat and when he does so there is no sound, for his formidable warsuit is so perfectly designed that it subtracts from his native agility only slightly. The Incubi lead lives of rigorous discipline; so much so that some Dark Eldar whisper in astonishment that they can actually be trusted to keep their words and their promises. Incubi are highly valued in Dark Eldar society as bodyguards and shock troops. It is believed that the very first Incubus was the first Phoenix Lord of the Striking Scorpions Aspect Warriors, Arhra, who fell to the service of Slaanesh by walking the Path of Damnation and joined the Dark Eldar. Arhra became the first Hierarch of the Incubi and created the first Incubi Shrine in the Dark City. Arhra is believed at present to be Drazhar, the Master of Blades, the greatest of the Dark Eldar Incubi.

However all Incubi are ultimately mercenaries who will fight for anyone, for any cause and will even impart their formidable skills to any who prove themselves worthy of the training. Their forbidding obsidian shrines, each presided over by an Incubus called a Hierarch, the dark counterpart of an Exarch, are filled with patrons and aspirants eager to learn the deadly arts of the Incubi. Through long and gruelling training, the strong will prosper and learn, while those who are weak will fail, be slain and their bodies burnt as an offering to the iron statue of the War God Khaine that lies at the heart of every Incubus shrine. Should an aspirant actually live long enough to defeat an Incubus in combat and take his armour from him, the final training will begin. Only when the initiate has killed an Eldar Aspect Warrior of the Craftworlds in single combat and shattered his victim's Spirit Stone and rebuilt it into one of the psychic torturing devices known as Tormentors, can he be fully inducted by the Hierarch of his shrine as an Incubus.

The Incubi focus not on artistry but on the pragmatic method of killing their opponent as efficiently and quickly as possible. Thugh they are trained in the use of every form of blade and ranged weapon, they favour the use of the potent Power Swords they call Klaives. A Dark Eldar Klaive is a masterwork weapon, displaying the exquisite balance and form to be expected from a work of Eldar craftsmanship. The Incubi consider the Klaive to be the only weapon properly used by any true warrior, though the Incubi's warleaders, who bear the title of Klaivex, sometimes favour the usage of such variants as the Demi-Klaive, two smaller powered blades that can be wielded separately or clasped together to form a much larger sword that adds to the wielder's strength. Every Klaivex is a born killer whose skill in taking lives is so extraordinary that even other Dark Eldar believe there must be something supernatural about their power. Despite their skill in one-on-one duels, Incubi scorn fair fights in actual combat conditions. When they close with their enemy, they send out waves of damaging neural energy from the Tormentors mounted on their armour's chestplate, leaving their enemies wracked with pain before the killing can truly begin. Some Incubi also possess special Tormentors known as Bloodstones that are crafted from the broken Spirit Stone of a slain Eldar Exarch. These weapons can fire a neural pulse so powerful that they can boil an enemy's blood, killing him outright from afar.

Wracks

A peculiar trait of the Dark Eldar psyche is that after a few Terran centuries of life they often request that the Haemonculi of the Dark City surgically modify their bodies into a form other than that with which they were born, for such voluntary alteration staves off the ennui to which all Eldar are prone and provides a whole new suite of experiences and debaucheries to be savoured and suffered. For this reason a Dark Eldar who has nothing to lose will willingly give himself up to the Haemonucli's mad artistry, emerging from his foul metamorphosis as something far more frightening than before, a creature known as a Wrack among the Dark Eldar of Commorragh. Each Wrack is a nightmarish example of his Haemonculus master's surgical craft, an individual cut apart and then reshaped into a walking instrument of eternal torture. Masked and physically altered to better instill terror into those they encounter, the Wracks act as the hands of the Haemonculi in the outside world and during combat they defend their masters with their lives. Formally known among the Haemonculi as Haemacolytes, each Wrack's only duty is to serve his master as required, whether upon the fleshcrafting slab or on the battlefield. The Wrack's surgically enhanced frame possesses a shock physical strength. In combat, they prefer to make use of close combat weapons such as sickled Venom Blades, corrosive, toxin-tipped Electrocorrosive Whips, stun-rods and silvered flesh hooks.

Wracks often have heavy metal gauntlets grafted in place of their original hands and these appendages can inject or withdraw bodily fluids from their victims with the flex of a tendon or be coated with searing venom to aid their master when accompanying him on a raid into realspace. It is not uncommon for Wracks to have three or even four arms surgically grafted onto their torsos, sometimes taken from other species. Spinal grafts and rampant bone growth is common in these beings, which often form exterior bone racks and hooks from which tissue samples and bioagents can be suspended so they are within easy reach when the Wrack's Haemonculus needs them. Wracks will also be modified in such a way that they can defend their benefactor in combat, or pillage a community in order to gather new subjects for their master's terrifying pleasure. Their finger and toenails are severed and replaced by iron-hard, razor-sharp talons while their faces are covered by inscrutable black iron masks to conceal their identity, for individuality has no place in the inscrutable existence of a Wrack. Wracks wear only the most simple of clothing during their day-to-day duties, usually going about their business in gore-stained butcher's aprons and tabards, an extraordinary array of torturer's tools clanking on their belts.

As the Haemonculi of the Dark City are megalomaniacs who tend toward delusions of godhood, they love to surround themselves with minions who will enact their orders without question or debate. Most Haemonculi refuse to sully themselves with physical labour of any kind, considering themselves polluted by the act of exertion on their own behalf. Instead, the dirty work of every Haemonculus is performed by his Wracks. Most Wracks hope to one day join the ranks of the Haemonculi and will endure any degradation at their master's hands in the hope that they, too, may one day ascend into the ranks of the lords of their particular coven. A common scene in the oubliettes and laboratories of the Haemonculi covens is a single, horrific figure leaning with satisfaction over a freshly vivisected victim while his Wracks scrabble about to carry out his commands. Those Wracks who have served their masters the longest and are considered his chief minion are known as Acothysts. Acothysts are slightly more potent in combat than their fellows, have more useful and/or deadly surgical alterations and are also most likely to be promoted to become a full Haemonculus within their coven. Wracks prefer poisoned, bladed weapons in combat and are armoured in gnarlskin, the hardened, altered flesh possessed by the Haemonculi and all their foul creations.

Hekatrix Bloodbrides

Each squad of Dark Eldar Wyches is led by a more skilled Wych known as aHekatrix, who in her turn reports to the Wych Cult's Succubus. It is common for a Succubus to gather the most talented and skilled of her Hekatrix handmaidens into a clique of elite murdereresses, led by the most skilled Hekatrix in the cult, who holds the position of Syren. These cliques, whose members are known as Hekatrix Bloodbrides, are usually plagued by often intense rivalries for the Succubus' favour. When combat begins, however, Bloodbrides become an unstoppable force, ritually anointing themselves with the blood they spill from the foe as a foul testament to their own dark prowess in the arts of death, pain and terror. Hekatrix Bloodbrides are armoured in Wychsuits, and normally make use of Plasma Grenades, a Splinter Pistol and close combat weapons like Razorflails, Hydra Gauntlets, Shardnets and Impalers. The Bloodbrides' commanding Syren normally uses a Blast Pistol, a close combat weapon like a Venom Blade, Agoniser or another Power Weapon and sometimes keeps a Phantasm Grenade Launcher in reserve to deal with more immediate threats.

Kabalite Trueborn

Naturally-born Dark Eldar are rare, due to the long gestation period of the Eldar body. The ones that are naturally birthed from their mothers' wombs, known as Trueborns, are often very privileged in Dark Eldar society because of the circumstances of their birth. As such, they are arrogant and see themselves as far better than the majority of Dark Eldar, who are born in amniotic gestation tubes and whom the Trueborn call the Halfborn. Due to this prejudice, the Trueborn often gather only in squads of other Trueborn within the Dark Eldar Kabals, and serve as the elite Kabalite Warriors that escort their Kabal's Archon into battle and serve as his most elite unit of Warriors. Trueborns often sport many more advanced weapons than their fellow Warriors, such as the Shard Carbine, a Dark Eldar weapon design that hybridises the Splinter Rifle and a Splinter Cannon and possesses a shorter range than either. Trueborn also often make use of Dark Lances and Splinter Cannons as well as Blasters and Shredders. The Trueborn are an elite group that excludes any Halfborn Dark Eldar birthed in an amniotic tube from their company. Led by an officer called a Dracon, these hardened killers carry a wide assortment of expensive and deadly weapons wherever they go, supposedly to better protect the life of their Archon but in truth only to better inflict more pain and death. Trueborn delight in dramatic displays of firepower, sending powerful fusillades into the enemy's ranks and leaving bodies and the broken carcasses of armoured vehicles in their wake.

Harlequins

Harlequins are not true Dark Eldar. Though they often frequent Commorragh and dwell within the Labyrinthine Dimension of the Webway, they exist outside of all Eldar societies while still moving between the Craftworlds, Commorragh and the Exodite homeworlds, their true motives remaining cloaked and hidden. The Harlequin prefer to dwell within the shattered corners of the original EldarWebway, and they usually only interact with the other Eldar societies on the night before what they believe will be a particularly important battle for the Eldar race. They often emerge unexpectedly from hidden Webway portals, staging dazzling performances known as masques drawn from the tales of Eldar Mythology that reenact the most sacred legends of the Eldar race. The Harlequins' performance is always extraordinary and can generate such depths of emotional feeling in other members of their species that a Harlequin troupe can hold even an audience of Dark Eldar completely enthralled. Any performance by a Harlequin troupe will always culminate with the tale of the Fall of the Eldar, an event still within the lifespans of the oldest Archons and Haemonculi of the Dark City, who find Act One of the performance especially gratifying. Because of their status as outsiders to all Eldar cultures, the Harlequins often work as intermediaries between the Eldar Craftworlds and the rulers of Commorragh. If the Harlequins have any true loyalty beyond devotion to their trickster deity Cegorach, the Laughing God, it is to the Eldar species as a whole, and they would see its unity and glory restored to that of ancient days.

The Harlequins are elite Eldar warriors who see no separation between the performance of art and the pursuit of war. Every thrust of the blade, every somersault over the head of an astonished foe, every sharp kick to the head is an act of celebration and worship for the Laughing God. The Harlequins embody an ancient secret that has haunted the Eldar since the Fall, for they alone know the secret of how to deny Slaanesh's claim upon their souls without resorting to the use of the Eldar Paths, Spirit Stones, or the Dark Eldar's Thirst for pain and agony. Even a handful of these warrior-dancers can turn the tide of a battle with their acrobatic assault. They always make their way to the frontlines of any Eldar combat they participate in, killing or capturing certain enemy individuals for their own mysterious reasons before vanishing into the hidden depths of the Webway once more. In contrast to the Dark Eldar, the Harlequins move as blurs of colour upon the field of battle, their holographic "domino fields" distracting the enemy. Once the Harlequin Troupe's dance of death begins, even the most hardened Dark Eldar raider is taken aback by the sheer artistry and skill with which these warriors-as-artists slash apart their foes.

Harlequins make use of a number of different forms of speciality wargear unavailable to any other Eldar units. The Harlequins' Flip Belts are personal anti-gravity devices that enable them to bound and somersault over even the most treacherous footing. Harlequins use a sophisticated Holo-suit to fragment their visual image and foil incoming fire and physical blows from the enemy. They are often armed with standard Shuriken Pistols and sometimes with the more potent Fusion Pistols, compact Eldar Melta Weapons whose elegance belies their sheer potency. Harlequins also often use a close combat weapon known as the Harlequin's Kiss that is a sharpened tube attached to the forearm. The Kiss can be punched into an enemy's body and the monofilament wire inside then uncoils, reducing the target's internal organs to a bloody spray in only an instant. Harlequin Troupes are normally led by a particularly wise Harlequin deep in the favour of the Laughing God known as the Troupe Master. The Troupe Master is usually armed with a Fusion Pistol and some form of Eldar Power Weapon.

There are two specialised troop types that can be found in a Harlequin troupe. These include:

**Death Jesters** - Harlequin Death Jesters are heavy weapons specialists, sinister warriors who stand apart from their fellow Harlequins because of their grim and unforgiving demeanour. Their costumes are not riots of rainbow colour like their fellows, but feature skulls and death's head masks, often decorated with the actual bones of their predecessors in the role of the troupe's Death Jester. The Death Jesters' particularly morbid sense of humour is greatly appreciated in the Dark City. Death Jesters are armed with anti-personnel Shrieker Cannons that fire Eldar plasti-crystal shurikens that have been coated with virulent genetic toxins that cause their targets' bodies to rupture and literally explode in a shocklingly violent fashion as their cells rapidly disintegrate. The Death Jesters always find this riotously humourous.**Shadowseers** - Shadowseers are Harlequin psykers whose abilities are centred around creating confusion and fear in their opponents. They add to the potency of what they view as their psychic performances by releasing grenades containing a special toxin from their _Creidann_ Hallucinogenic Grenade Launcher backpacks that can induce a suggestive state in targets that the Shadowseers then use to create psychically-programmed hallucinations in their foes' minds. During Harlequin masques, the troupe's Shadowseers act as the storytellers, forming scintillating illusions for the audience that dance and duel in the air. In combat, they can use this same power to implant visions of gibbering terror within the enemy troops' minds or even remove the presence of the Harlequins from the foe's awareness altogether. This latter power is known among all Eldar as the Veil of Tears.Mandrakes

Within the darkest corners of the Webway's labyrinthine confines lurk the foul humanoid creatures known as Mandrakes in the Eldar Lexicon. This vile breed is secretly feared even by other Dark Eldar, for a Mandrake can pull itself into any region of space-time through another being's shadow, emerging with a sibilant hiss to sink its frigid claws and teeth into flesh. Their ebon skins writhe with blasphemous runes and their faces shift and flow, one moment a featureless mask, the next parting to reveal a maw filled with sharpened teeth. Mandrakes exist both in realspace and a cursed shadow world that may be a part of the Immaterium. To fight them is to combat a living shadow.

The true origins of the Mandrakes remain shrouded in time and secrecy. Some Eldar savants claim that the Mandrakes are descended from those of their race inhabiting the Webway who before the Fall of the Eldar engaged in heinous acts of lust with daemonic entities of the Warp when the lost Eldar empire was at its most decadent. Others hold that the living shadows are descended from a forbidden pleasure cult that found its own way to escape the devastation of the Fall, fleeing into a nightmare dimension of shadow within the Immaterium and reemerging as something no longer quite natural. Young Dark Eldar call the Mandrakes "creepers" and whisper that they crawl from one shadow to another and can emerge from one's reflection into the real universe. They believe that the Mandrakes are the absence of light given life, and in that they may very well be right. Such theories do not seem so far-fetched when one examines the Mandrakes' appearance. Their flesh is night-black and seems to absorb rather than reflect light, their featureless faces shift like rancid oil while their hair is the color of splintered bone. Surrounding them is an aura of darkness and cold that saps the strength from all those with the misfortune to be standing nearby. Often the first sign of an imminent Mandrake attack will be the sudden onset of freezing temperatures, flash freezing all the moisture out of the very air. The shapes set into their flesh are Eldar sigils of destruction that pulse with a venomous green brilliance when the Mandrake feeds upon the terror and pain of its victims. Mandrakes possess the ability to channel these stolen life energies, shaping blasts of blue-white cold fire known as Baleblasts that emerge from their taloned hands to freeze their foes in place. When they finally fall upon their terrified prey, they use not only the natural weapons of claw and fang, but also hideous, sickle-shaped blades similar to the surgical tools beloved of the Haemonculi.

Like all the inhabitants of the Dark City, the Mandrakes thrive on the infliction of pain and terror on other living things. As a result of their unsurpassed abilities at stealth, many Dark Eldar Archons have sought to hire the Mandrakes' services for a realspace raid by his or her Kabal. The Mandrakes normally ask for a share of any slaves taken as their payment, but sometimes for reasons unknown, they will ask for something far more arcane, such as a heartbeat, a true name or a voice. Such requests are rarely denied, for the Mandrakes' only clothing is a patchwork garment created from the flayed skins of those who have betrayed them. They are infamous for their ability to track down any quarry and they are able to manifest anywhere in the universe that shadows gather. Sometimes, a Mandrake of particular age and power will join a Dark Eldar raid and will lead others of its kind in the taking of slaves or in pursuit of one of its more esoteric desires. These hideous creatures are called Nightfiends among the Dark Eldar and they may possess many powers of shadow that remain unknown even to the denizens of Commorragh.

Grotesques

Grotesques are the towering, insane creations of the Haemonculi that are employed as living weapons by their twisted masters. An individual does not become a Grotesque voluntarily like the Wracks. Though they usually begin their ultimately wretched existences as Dark Eldar, these repulsive constructs have been reborn into their new shapes through a hideous metamorphosis meted out as a punishment for some real or perceived slight to the Haemonculi. The process by which a Dark Eldar captive is transformed into a Grotesque begins with a series of painful and humilating chemical and surgical modifications to the body. Dark Eldar are by nature narcissists and the Haemonculi always take great joy in warping the flesh of those who have angered them. Though the process can take several Terran years to complete, the victim is constantly pumped full of growth hormones, macrosteroids and muscle stimulants until his or her form has swollen grossly out of proprotion. Bone growth is accelerated by injections of osseovirals, which results in the excruciatingly painful growth of external bone spines from the massively muscled back of the nascent Grotesque. A Grotesque's muscled forearms are augmented with blades and toxin-dispensing gauntlets and his hands are surgically replaced with grasping talons or dripping tubes that can eject a great spray of the Grotesque's own toxic blood-ichor. At this point, the Grotesque has usually been clinically lobotomised, though some are left dimly aware of their situation the better to grasp the full horror of what has been done to them. The Grotesque becomes mindlessly obedient to its Haemonculus master, able to comprehend and execute only the most simple of tasks. His or her terror-stretched face is forever sealed behind a mask of black iron and the new monster lumbers forth from the Haemonculi's flesh-pods covered in ichor, a new and powerful battle slave for his foul masters.

When moving from place to place, Grotesques simply shuffle after their keepers, but when given the command to kill and maim, they become true engines of destruction. Racks of syringes depress into their spinal sumps to dump potent stimulants into their blood-ichor stream, ridged bellow-pumps connected to their primary lungs wheeze and contract at triple speed, and veins throb near to bursting as tube-punctured hearts are forced to pound. With roars of anger and pain muffled by their iron masks, Grotesques fling themselves into close combat, slaughtering every living thing within their not inconsiderable reach with greathooks, their own claws and massive cleavers. They never stop killing until they receive their master's command. If this command is not heard for whatever reason in battle or because their Haemonculus master has temporarily been shuffled off the mortal coil, the Grotesque will simply continue killing, even if this means slaying other Dark Eldar in the same raiding force. Sometimes, a Grotesque's body will respond even more aggressively to the Haemonculi's transformative treatments over time and become even larger, more powerful and more bloodthirsty, if such a thing is possible. These hideous monsters are known to the Dark Eldar as Aberrations, and they are feared by any sane individual, though such creatures are valued particularly highly by the Haemonculi covens of the Dark City.

**Troops**Wyches

The Wych Cults of Commorragh are second in prestige in Dark Eldar society only to the Kabals that sponsor them. The Dark Eldar thrive upon expert displays of bloodletting, and in the pursuit of murder the Wyches are talented females indeed. Gladiatorial fighters and combatants without equal, the Wyches are true artists in the realm of physical combat. Most of the Hekatarii, as the Wyches call themselves in the Eldar Lexicon, are female, for Dark Eldar females find it easier to attain the levels of athletic maneuverability and grace that their craft of killing demands. Male Wyches exist, but they ensure that their Wych Cult is never at a lack for strong or talented offspring; they are valued within the Cult, but rarely attain high rank or perform in the gladiatorial arenas of the Dark City.

Melee kills invigorate the Dark Eldar because of the greater torment involved in the death of the victim. This reality is magnified in the Wych Cults, whose curved, envenomed blades extend the exquisite pain of every perfect cut. The knife or Venom Blade is a symbolic weapon for the Wych Cults; each blade is specially-crafted by a master and kept in a sheath outfitted with a gravitic sharpening field to ensure it is always ready to take a life. The myriad fighting styles of the Wych Cults are all based on the use of deception and cunning. They wield a variety of outlandish-looking weapons that can extend, enmesh, retract, split in two or snap an opponent's own weapon with a supple twist of the wielder's pale wrist. Many Wyches specialise in the use of these kinds of melee weapons. Amongst their number are the Wyches known as the Lacerai, who use segmented Razorflails that can split apart and lash out like a whip; the Hydrae, who use crystalline Hydra Gauntlets that can sporut and regrow a deadly profusion of new crystal blades; and the Yraqnae, who use electrified Shardnets and extendable, twin-bladed Impalers to ensure their victims never escape with their bodies - or lives - intact.

All Wyches take great pride in their appearance. They enter combat dressed with as much aesthetic care as if they were to meet a lover. Regardless of the cult they serve, Wyches wear the bladed black armour of the arena over one side of an impeccably elegant and skintight bodysuit known as a Wychsuit. The other side has sections deliberately cut away to expose their pale flesh, as if to tempt Death himself. The Wyches use a variety of combat drugs distilled by the Haemonculi covens to increase their already superhuman dexterity. When outnumbered in combat, Wyches will roll, backflip and pirouette out of the way of the foe, stabbing their blades into any vulnerable points on their enemies' bodies, slitting throats and gouging out eyes as they go. They flow like water around their foes' attempts to land a blow, their expressions of aloof arrogance melting into infuriating smiles of superiority as they drink in each fresh scream of agony.

Most Wyches wield a close combat weapon and Splinter Pistol, while others may make use of Shardnets, Impalers, Hydra Gauntlets and the dreaded Dark Eldar Razorflails. Squads of Wyches in combat also often use Plasma Grenades and Haywire Grenades for crowd control purposes and every Wych is armoured in her Wychsuit. Each squad of Wyches is led by one of their most skilled number, who is known as a Hekatrix and reports to the Wych Cult's ruling Succubus. The Hekatrixes with the most talent for murder may earn a place in the Succubus' own elite clique of murderesses, the Hekatrix Bloodbrides, who are led by an officer known as a Syren.

Kabalite Warriors

The Warriors of the Dark Eldar Kabals lie at the heart of every Dark Eldar strike force, pirate fleet and slave raider assault. They are the cruelest members of their caste, hungry for power over their fellows and thirsty to taste the suffering of others. Each Warrior will have forged a fearsome repuation for himself in the war-torn halls of High Commorragh, and has proven himself in multiple battles to be a merciless combatant. The more vicious and ruthless a Warrior is, the better his chances for advancement within the Kabal. Only a born killer can thrive within the backstabbing halls of the Dark City and only a chosen few of true skill and utter cruelty are selected by the Kabal leadership to enjoy the thrill and privilege of striking at the worlds of realspace and returning with living souls, the screaming booty that every Kabal requires for its survival.

Only the most skilled at arms among the Dark Eldar of each of the Dark City's sectors are selected to serve as Kabalite Warriors. Whether male or female in gender, Dark Eldar Warriors are tall, whipcord thin and athletically built, more powerful in body and violent in temperament than those of their brethren who remain behind in the Webway. When they go to war, each Warrior encases him or herself in a sophisticated bodysuit of segemented, powered Eldar armour, similar to the suits worn by the Craftworld Eldar. These suits are donned during long, and usually painful pre-combat rituals, the better to ensure the Warrior's psyche has been honed to a single point of murderous intent, somewhat like those Eldar Aspect Warriors who "put on their war mask" when they go to battle, though Kabalite Warriors express only the darkest and most violent extremes of Khaine's battle-madness. Much of the armour is held in place using long metal barbs that penetrate deep into the Warrior's nerve bundles, sharpening his senses by subjecting him to constant pain.

It is pain that energises the Kabalite Warriors and it is pain they hope to inflict upon their prey - and the more merciless and agonising, the better. To this end, Kabalite Warriors make use of a wide-array of particularly devious and deadly weapons. Foremost amongst these is the dread Splinter Rifle, which is a long-barelled and elegantly-shaped kinetic weapon that fires a stream of jagged crystalline slivers, much like Craftworld Eldar's Shuriken Weapons. However, each needle-like shard is impregnated with a wide spectrum of potential hypertoxins. A Splinter Rifle can slay its target over severa extremely excruciating moments as the toxin does its work, allowing the jubilant wielder of the rifle to savour their victim's agonising death as a gourmand might savor a fine meal. Though the distilled poisons of a Splinter Weapon can kill even the monstrous biologically-engineered living weapons of the Tyranids, it is of little use against heavily armoured enemy vehicles. A squad of Kabalite Warriors will usually carry a far more destructive weapon for this purpose - the Blaster is a particular favorite, for it can destroy even a Space Marine Land Raiderwith only a single shot. All Kabalite Warriors are also experts in close combat fighting, though few have the political pull needed to ensure that they can claim regeneration in the lairs of the Haemonculi. As such, Warriors often employ heavy ranged weaponry to avoid the severe injuries melee combat can bring. The sightlinks built into their Splinter Cannons and Dark Lances not only improve accuracy but also allow the wielder to watch his victim's agony as each weapon blast penetrates flesh and bone. The more imaginative Warriors use mnemonic scopes to record such events, replaying the hologhosts created upon their return and basking in the envy of their fellows at their skill and foresight.

Each squad of Kabalite Warriors is led by an officer called a Sybarite, typically the most veteran and experienced among their number. Sybarites are not only veteran raiders of realspace, but also the Kabalites who have the honour and duty of initiating each new Warrior into the always-brutal mysteries of their new Kabal. While certainly no Sybarite, or any Dark Eldar for that matter, can claim the loyalty of his or her underlings, the Sybarites are obeyed for the simple reason that they are the masters of the craft of war and their orders when followed are more likely to lead to success in the raid...and survival.

Raider

The first indicator of a Dark Eldar raid into realspace is always a viridian light in the sky, that unfolds and spirals outwards into a shimmering, multidimensional portal that blazes with green flame. Through this gateway comes dozens of bladed anti-gravity assault skimmers, that angle downwards to seize their unexpecting prey. The most common of these anti-gravity combat transports are known as Raiders. Raiders are the most favoured vehicles of the Dark Eldar and are in use across the galaxy. Lightweight and extremely manoeuvrable, the Raider epitomises the Dark Eldar's belief that velocity always triumphs over durability. Unlike the lumbering vehicles of the human Imperium, a Raider does not carry its passengers within heavily armoured Ceramite shells. Instead, these skimmers are more like the gliding anti-gravity pleasure yachts once common on the homeworlds of the ancient Eldarempire, modified to enhance their speed and fitted with blade-sharp fins and jagged keels to slice apart any foes.

The primary motive power for a Raider comes from its compact, air-breathing jet turbine engines. The transport is held aloft by anti-gravity emitters built into the vehicle's ventral ribbing. This technology allows a Raider to skim even the most rugged terrain at an extraordinarily rapid speed. Though each of these transports is customised by the Kabal that owns it and is adorned with the severed body parts of past victims, all have certain basic features in common, including a repulsor keelblade manned by a talented steersman, Aethersails to harness the multidimensional shear energies that flow from the Webway portal from which they emerge, and a prow-mounted heavy weapon, usually a Dark Lance, to sow slaughter amongst the unexpecting enemy. The curved hull of every Raider possess sweeping fairings and its metal deck is pierced through with tesselating designs intended to lessen the skimmer's weight and increase its speed. Sickle-blades, Electroshock Rams and Splinter Rifle racks are also frequently mounted on Raiders, for the Dark Eldar will always use any weapon available in their vast arsenal of pain.

The Raider's primary function is to serve as a troop transport during a realspace raid and it has a passenger capacity of 10 Dark Eldar warriors, whether they are drawn from a Kabal, a Wych Cult, a Haemonculi Coven or from one of the various mercenary Dark Eldar groups of the Dark City. Such is the surety and confidence of its Dark Eldar occupants that they can hang onto the balustrades and trophy-hooks of the Raider with ease even as it races forward at breakneck speeds, rejoicing in the thrill of the hunt as the enemy's shrapnel bursts all around them. It takes them but a second to detach from the transport and drop into the midst of the enemy, already savoring the screams to come. Once the foe has been vanquished, any enemy survivors are lashed or chained to the Raider or even simply impaled, still living, upon its trophy hooks. The corpses of those Dark Eldar who died in the raid are also carried back to Commorragh with a distinct lack of dignity or sentiment, heaped in a bloody tangle of limbs or hung like macabre mannequins from the Raider's spiked hull. The Dark Eldar have no pity for the dead, whether their own or of other species.

Venom

The raids of the Dark Eldar rely above all else on the advantages of surprise and sheer speed. As a result, all Dark Eldar skimmers are extraordinarily fast and highly manoeuvrable in-atmosphere. The most agile of all Dark Eldar transports is known as the Venom, an arrowhead-shaped skimmer that carries an elite group of Dark Eldar warriors into battle. Rather than present one obvious target, Dark Eldar strike forces attack in waves, with a veritable horde of their skimmer craft pouring out of the Webway portals they open in the tortured skies of targeted worlds. Although many of these Dark Eldar craft can still be intercepted by enemy antiaircraft fire, even a highly disciplined battery will prove unable to stop all of the craft in the black swarm that falls upon it. Additionally, it is always the largest and most populous of transports that draws the attention of well-drilled enemy soldiers. Thus, the most devious Dark Eldar ride to battle upon aircraft no larger than the Vypersused by their Craftworld counterparts or the sky-chariots once so ubiquitous in the skies of the planets ruled by the lost Eldar empire. Speed is always of paramount importance to the Dark Eldar - should even one Venom penetrate enemy air defences it can be enough to prove the doom of the opposition, as its lethal passengers do their bloody work.

Though the Venom's booster engines and the anti-gravitic emitters implanted within its ribbing is similar to that found on other Dark Eldar skimmercraft, the transport is so agile and sensitive to the commands of its pilot that it can juke through a hail of incoming fire, its holographic Flickerfield confounding enemy snipers and Auspexes. A skilled Venom pilot can even manoeuvre his craft into those segments of the Webway designed only for the passage of a single individual at a time. It is for this reason that Venoms are very popular with Commorrite hunters and those Dark Eldar nobles of the Dark City's upper spires who enjoy running down their enemies as a form of vile sport.

Despite its small size, the Venom can carry a small squad of up to 5 hand-picked elite warriors who have been trained to enter combat as a coordinated unit. Though most Dark Eldar lords and elite warriors prefer to lead their Kabalite Warriors into battle from aboard a larger Raider personalised to their specific tastes, this does not sit well with those especially arrogant Comorrites who do not wish to consort with mere footsoldiers. Sometimes Venoms are used to transport only a single warrior to battle in unusual style. This is usually those Dark Eldar nobles so convinced of their own superiority that they believe they do not need bodyguards - or those so paranoid that they fear them. Those amongst the forces of the Imperium who have seen the Dark Eldar in combat know that a single one of these malicious xenos warriors is sometimes all it takes-the true toxin delivered by a Venom is its passengers, not its weapons.

The Venom is armed with a twin-linked Splinter Rifle, a Splinter Cannon and a holographic Flickerfield for defensive purposes.

**Fast Attack**Hellions

The tortured skies of Commorragh are warzones as perilous as its xenos-riddled ghettos and its noble-ruled spires. Through the mists soar arrogant lords and winged hunters seeking the next kill. The most savage of these airborne horrors are the Hellions, gangs of feral Dark Eldar who descend upon their prey in a flurry of blades before soaring away, safely out of reach. Hellions are Dark Eldar miscreants. Their numbers include aspirants not yet old enough to be chosen as Kabalite Warriors, those who have been exiled by their Archons and those who have rejected life in a Kabal in favour of one of continued autonomy, beholden to none. Packs of Hellions haunt the desolate regions of the Dark City, surviving through the use of their wits and taking pride in the scars they earn in the course of their savage lives. Hellions gather together into large gangs to better ensure their survival, some of which can be as large as a lesser Kabal. Hellion gangs often have fierce rivalries between themselves and with the Reavers and Scourges of the upper levels, for they resent above all those who flaunt their privilege and status. Though a Hellion in his typical bravado might outwardly claim that he lives as he does for the terror and anarchy he can spread on the mean streets of the Dark City, like all Dark Eldar each Hellion secretly burns with ambition to become a power in the city in his own right.

Hellions enter combat upon Skyboards, single-pilot, anti-gravitic skimmers that are highly prized amongst the Hellions as symbols of their independence. Each Skyboard is personalised with trophies and Dark Eldar glyphs, though most have changed hands several times, won either in ritual knife-fights between gang members or claimed as bounty. Skyboards are sensitive to the slightest pressure. As a result of this, and for the sheer thrill of it, Hellions often take combat drugs that enhance their reaction speeds still further so that they can flip and jink like madmen, their reflexes now as sharp as their perfectly filed teeth.

Unpredictable and wild, Hellions attack the Kabals just as often as they join with them to participate in realspaceraids. In turn, it is unusual for the Archons to bring their wrath to bear on the roving Hellion gangs, for they consider such street scum to be beneath their lofty notice and a Kabal bounty hunter skilled enough to bring a particular Hellion to the torture chambers of his employers is a rare specimen better employed in other ways. However, the Kabals value Hellions as terror troops, and the Heliarchs that lead them are not above cutting deals with the Kabals and the Wych Cults - if the price is right. Many realspace invasions undertaken by the Kabals are lead by waves of howling, drug-enraged Hellions atop their Skyboards.

In combat, Hellion gangs will swoop directly into the main body of the enemy, screaming curses and mocking taunts in the Eldar Lexicon. A Hellion's signature weapon is a Hellglaive, a double-bladed polearm with recurved hooks on each end that allow a skilled wielder to latch onto nearby objects and rapidly change direction while on a Skyboard. Each Hellglaive is viciously sharp, and it is common practice for Hellions to call out beforehand a particular part of the body of a foe that they intend to cut off on the next pass of their Skyboard. Such is their skill with the blades that a swarm of Hellions can fall upon a squad of enemy soldiers and lop off limbs and heads before scattering once more, while a single chosen victim is carried aloft into the sky to be cut apart at the Hellions' leisure.

Hellions are outfitted with their Skyboards, a Wychsuit, a store of potent combat enhancement drugs, a Hellglaiveand a Stunclaw, a close combat weapon that can paralyze a victim so that he can be snatched into the sky.

Reavers

The Reavers of Commorragh are fascinated by bringing death to others at high speeds. They ride to war upon the most streamlined and pared-down of all Eldar skycraft - the Eldar Jetbike, the perfect fusion of motion and lethal power. The Eldar experience sensations and emotions to a far greater degree than any other sentient race and their psyches are given over too easily to obsession. Reavers, having first gotten a taste for high-speed violence during raids intorealspace, are those Dark Eldar consumed with achieving the maximum-impact kill. It is not enough for them to simply carry out acts of mayhem and murder or to soar through the air at overwhelming speeds. These savage sadists must accomplish both at once to have their vile obsession truly sated. When they accomplish a well-placed and mortal blow delivered at an obscene rate of speed, they feel that spike of pure joy that Reavers consider the ultimate thrill in life.

In the toroid racing arenas that girdle the highest spires of the Dark City, the Reavers duel amongst themselves for supremacy. These vain and mortally-competitive riders engage in death races each night, their Jetbikes screaming around each arena in a high-stakes battle that brings screams of ecstacy from the bloodthirsty crowd of spectators. No quarter is ever asked for or given in these races, for to come in last is literally a death sentence. Reavers will pull every trick they can on the back of a Jetbike to secure even a fraction of a second's advantage over their competitors. The arena champions endlessly modify their craft's vanes and blast-engines, install targeting holograms for their Jetbike's built-in weapons, pierce their craft's fairings so that the shriek of the air created by their passing is of a pitch that distinguishes them from their peers and wear flexible suits akin to "second skins" to eliminate air resistance.

Reavers, like many Dark Eldar warriors, use artificial narcotic stimulants to enhance their performance and capacity for sensation in the death races or in combat. They are cheats and liars like so many of their kin, and give respect only to those who can pull of an "elegant kill". It is considered improper to simply maim a fellow rider during the death races, while a well-executed decapitation while riding inverted can bring a smile even to the frozen face of the most jaded Kabal Archon. Because of this no-holds-barred approach, weapons are extensively employed during the death races in the most prestigious of the toroid arenas. The most infamous and celebrated Reavers employ underslung Grav-Talons to push their rivals into the artfully bladed contours of the arena's walls, or release clusters of proximity-sensing anti-gravitic caltrops that detonate in spectacular chain explosions behind them to the crowd's applause. Reavers are so attuned to their beloved Jetbike steeds that in combat on a realspace raid they will use them as if they were extensions of their own bodies. Though a Reaver Jetbike usually incorporates a Splinter Rifle, the craft itself is the rider's most favoured weapon. Reavers pilot their Jetbikes with such uncanny precision that they can take off a head or even slash open a throat with a single pass of their finely-sharpened keels. A favorite tactic is to dive down from the clouds, corkscrewing the craft so that the razored edges of its blade-vanes dismember those unfortunate enough to be caught in the pass or rip through them head-on.

In addition to their Jetbikes, Reavers are normally outfitted with a Wychsuit, a Splinter Pistol, their combat stimulants and a Dark Eldar close combat weapon of their choice.

Scourges

If one were to trespass amongst the jutting spires of upper Commorragh, one might just make out the winged figures soaring upon the hot thermals of the Dark City. If one looked carefully, these figures would be recognised as the Scourges, genetically and surgically altered avian Dark Eldar who have been refashioned into something far more deadly. If a gaze lingers too long, those same figures will swoop towards the watcher, seizing him and impaling him upon the sleek spires of their aeries.

Scourges are an intrinsic part of the society of Commorragh. The omnipresent intrigues of the Dark City thrive on information, without which even the greatest of the Kabals is soon rendered impotent. The most secure forms of Vox transmission can always be intercepted and psychic communication is strictly forbidden to the Dark Eldar. Instead, the Dark Eldar aristocracy pays handsomely for the Scourges to take their missives to their destination by hand. Each communique is sealed with tailor-made toxins, the antidotes to which - usually - are only held by the recipient. The Scourges are so vital to the intrigues of the Dark City that to kill one is to invite a very painful death by his or her fellows.

Considered the pinnacle of Dark Eldar body modification, the metamorphosis from warrior to Scourge is a lengthy and painful process, as one might expect of the Dark Eldar. A rich and daring Dark Eldar may surrender himself to the mercies of the Haemonculi and request that his bones be hollowed out by the drills of a Talos, that bands of new, vat-grown muscle be grafted onto his torso, and powerful avian wings and adrenaline dispensers be attached to his shoulders so that he is capable of undertaking true flight. Even if the warrior survives this grueling procedure, he is still not yet a true Scourge, for he must then fly all the way to the corpse-strewn aeries of his new brethren. His still raw and bleeding wings carry him from the oubliettes of the Haemonculi to the topmost spires of the Dark City where the Scourges make their home and he must fight through the deadly fatigue, warring gangs of Hellions, vicious Reavers and all the other types of airborne terrors to be found in Upper Commorragh to get there. If he makes this vertical pilgrimage and manages to survive its dangers, he earns the right to call himself a Scourge, a member of a highly exclusive mercenary clique of skyborne warriors that looks with disdain upon those of their kin who remain tied to the ground.

Many Scourges, especially the veterans known as Solarites, are so removed from their former lives that they now sport feathers in place of hair and elongated skulls. No matter what their chosen appearance, all Scourges relish the arts of war. Because of this, and the immense wealth they earn from the Kabals, all Scourges possess highly advanced Dark Eldar wargear. Clad in a form of porous body armour called Ghostplate, they descend from above, shrieking with the sheer exhilaration as they ruthlessly scythe down those who seek to escape. Scourges prefer to engage the enemy at range, for they are highly protective of their altered and now fragile physiques. They lay down punishing salvos of firepower, glorying in the screams of their dying foes while using their enhanced senses before wheeling about for another pass. As a result all Scourge weapons are designed to be fired while in flight. The most popular is the Shardcarbine, an advanced variant of the Splinter Rifle with a mich higher rate of fire, though Scourges also favour the Haywire Blaster, which releases the electromagnetic ernegy of Commorragh's captive suns in a powerful burst that fry electronics and the Heat Lance, which can disintegrate a foe in a blast of atomic fire. Scourges also usually carry a number of Plasma Grenades for hardened or heavily armoured targets.

Beastmasters

Over the millennia since Commorragh's founding, its sand-filled arenas have drunk the blood of millions. Each arena has witnessed countless spectacles of perveristy and death, but there is one gladiatorial favourite that never fades in popularity - the wild hunts of the Beastmasters.

The Beastmasters themselves are technically part of the Wych Cults, though they are mostly male and remain remote from the Hekatarii. Some suspect they are part of a shamanic tradition, for when the Beastmasters go to battle, they wear totems and masks echoing the nature of the alien predators under their control. It is partially because of these artefacts that they enjoy such mastery over their ferocious beasts, for their masks harbour complex sonic emitters and phereomone traps. Even unmasked Beastmasters have a natural ability to dominate, and the most senior of their number can subdue rampant Megasaur with a baleful glare.

When accompanying a realspace raid, Beastmasters gladly involve themselves in the business of bloodletting. They hover above the gore-spattered ground upon modified anti-gravitic Skyboards, goading their charges into the fray with whip and lure and laying about themselves until their enemies are torn to shreds and frequently messily devoured. In the Dark City, their arenas have played host to a broad variety of dangerous creatures, including blade-legged Helspiders, hyper-vigilant Bhargesi, and even capturedAdeptus Astartes warriors. Three species remain in perennial use, however, and the largest of these is the Donorian Clawed Fiend, the Empyrean-spawned beasts called Khymerae, and the alien terror known as the Razorwing.

**Heavy Support**Talos Pain Engines

A Talos Pain Engine is the most widespread of the Dark Eldar's many so-called Engines of Pain. Festooned with multiple surgical apparatus and grotesque weapons of war, the Talos is a part organic and part mechanical device conceived by the creations of a mad genius. Created by the insane Dark Eldar masters of pain known as the Haemonculi, the Talos was first constructed as a torture device, but is now employed across the galaxy's innumerable battlefields. Sweeping forward upon anti-gravitic motors, the Talos catches its victims with its razor-sharp claws and then incinerates them from the inside out. The death spasms of those captured propel the Talos towards its enemies as its unique Sting wildly spews death in all directions and its many-bladed arms cut through armour and bone alike with lashing blows. These semi-sentient machines are invaluable to the Haemonculi, as they serve as both guardians and mobile torture chambers, inflicting punishment upon all those that displease their master. The fate of those caught within the death-grip of a Talos does not end with death. The remnants of the victims caught within its grasp is siphoned out to be used in the creation of potions and elixirs.

Ravager

An Adaptation of the raider, the Ravager fills the role of "heavy support" sporting 3 high powered heavy weapons. either dark lances or disintegrator cannons. While it is used heavy support, it is still lightning fast, like the raider, and indeed, all Dark Eldar vehicles and still sports very little in the way of armour.

Cronos Parasite Engines

Like the Talos, the Cronos Parasite Engine is a creation of the Haemonculi. However unlike the Talos, however, the Cronos isn't used as mere brutal killing force, it is instead used to drain the souls of their victims. Stripping their souls, they magnify it through their carapace, and fire it to another Dark Eldar close by, usually their macabre captors.

Razorwing Jetfighter

An Aircarft with speed unmatched by even the fastest of of the Craftworld vehicles, the Razorwing jetfighter is commonly used as heavy support and to rapidly advance ahead of the main force, taking out gun batterys and battle tanks to prevent casualties to the main fleet. The Razorwing is piloted by an ex raver jetbiker who earned enough to escape the carnage of the death races, and now seeks to main and kill without risking his own skin.

Voidraven Bomber

A bigger, more heavily armed and armoured version of the Razorwing Jetfighter, the Voidraven bomber sports a much higher cluster of weaponry. Allowing its 2 crew members to better kill and destroy their prey. Like it smaller cousion, the razorwing, The Voidraven is piloted by an ex raver jetbiker who earned enough to escape the carnage of the death races, and now seeks to main and kill without risking his own skin. However, it is the gunner of this sleek aircraft who defines its worth.


	6. Chapter 6

Orks

The **Orks,** also called **Greenskins**, are a savage, warlike, green-skinned race of humanoids who are spread all across the Milky Way Galaxy. They share many features with _Warhammer Fantasy_ Orcs (and were initially called **Space Orcs** to distinguish them). They are seen by their enemies (pretty much everyone else in the galaxy) as savage, warlike, and crude, but they are the most successful species in the whole galaxy, outnumbering possibly every other intelligent race, even Mankind (with the very plausible exception of the Tyranids, who are split between thousands of subspecies genetically engineered for specific purposes). However, this massive population of Orks is split into hundreds of tiny empires, often warring between themselves. It has been speculated that were the Orks ever to unite as a single racial entity, they would undoubtedly crush any opposition that would dare to stand against such a tsunami of green muscle. Luckily, the Orks enjoy killing each other every bit as much as they savour shedding the blood of the galaxy's other peoples.

History

The Orks were created more than 60 million Terran years ago as a warrior race originally called the Krork by the long-vanished reptilian alien species known as the Old Ones, whom the Orks refer to as the Brain Boyz. The Orks were created by the Brain Boyz to fight the Necrons and their C'tan masters in the great interstellar conflict called the War in Heaven over 60 million Terran years ago that shattered the galactic civilisation of the Old Ones that existed prior to the rise of the Eldar.

Orks are thus genetically engineered to be muscular, aggressive, and none too bright; their technology is maintained by a caste ofOddboyz who have genetic dispositions to be unusually skilled with maintaining and developing technology, though this skill is an unconscious one preserved through genetic memories hard-wired into the Oddboyz' DNA by the Brain Boyz millions of years ago. Indeed, the Brain Boyz were apparently able to encode information on how to build simple machinery into the genomes of the Orks; thus Mekboyz require very little training in their function, since they understand mechanical principles at a fully instinctive level.

Orks lack individual psychic power, being denied such abilities by the Old Ones. However, they do have a sort of collaborative, collective psychic ability, meaning that if enough Orks believe something is true, then it will actually become so, brought into power by their gestalt psychic ability. For example, Ork rockets painted yellow create bigger explosions, simply because the vast majority of Orks think they do. This is also why much of the Orks' seemingly ramshackle technology will do terrible damage in the hands of Orks, but will cease to function when used by other races.

Other castes include Painboyz (or Mad Doks) who heal Orks wounded in battle and Runtherdz (later renamed "Slaverz") who direct the efforts of the small, Goblin-like Orkoids called Gretchin. There also exist more specialized Ork castes such as Diggaboyz and Brewerz; however, the Imperium currently possesses no information on them other than their bare existence; it may be assumed that when the Orks go to war, these castes fight as an ordinary mob of Shoota-armed Boyz.

The Ork language literally has no word for "diplomacy"; they solve almost all of their disputes by fighting. Indeed, many intelligent races believe that violence itself is a language amongst the Orks, since they use pain and brutality to get their points across to each other. Orks are not very intelligent or clever, and they even label the use of strategy and fleeing from battle as 'un-Orky'.

Orks are born to Feral Ork enclaves as Wildboyz. They are then recruited into warbands and fight for a while with primitive weapons such as spears, before being recruited into a Boyz Mob and being given their first Shoota. If they survive the ensuing ten or twenty years of warfare, they become overwhelmed with the urge to go off "lookin' fer sumfink" and wander back to their enclaves to breed, developing sexual characteristics on the way. In newer editions, however, adult Orks are constantly giving off fungus-like spores which lie in the ground of worlds they invade or settle, often for years, waiting to develop into Orks or Gretchin. Thus a world invaded by Orks will be troubled by them for hundreds of years to come, even if the original assault is beaten off.

Ork weaponry is built by the Mekboyz or Mekaniaks, as well as being captured from enemies or delivered as tribute. It is intentionally portrayed as being rather Rube-Goldberg-ish, often steam-driven and with clunky, early-industrial age driving belts and extraneous bells, whistles, and gongs. It is often based on teleporter and force-field technology, which the robust Ork physiology can use more easily than humans; a weapon found in_ Ere We Go_, for instance, is the Snotling Teleport Gun. Snotlings are a tiny, Orkoid race even smaller than Gretchin and less bright than Orks, thus they are not usually of much use in combat. When sent through a warp tunnel to appear inside an enemy vehicle or power suit, however, they are a terrifying experience, because the teleportation goes through the demonic realm known as the Warp, scaring the Snotlings out of their minds and their first instinct after experiencing such terror is to slash whatever appears in front of them. When they arrive at their destination in realspace, they are a biting, scratching mass of flatulent fury. The Teleport Gun suffered from severe inaccuracy, but could be quite effective when it did hit. However, the rules for it were very complex, and it was removed from later editions. The "Shokk Attack Gun", as it is now called, is available in the new Ork Codex.

Physiology

Orks are green-skinned and red-blooded, a side effect of their symbiotic physiological and genetic relationship with fungi. Orks are genetically engineered for combat, and quite efficiently so. They are extremely strong, and their squat bodies can withstand immense punishment. This is fortunate since the Painboyz operate on a generally nineteenth-century level of surgical knowledge; unlike humans, though, Orks are quite capable of being beheaded, having the head sewn onto a different body, and surviving the experience to fight again.

A particularly favored ingredient in their diet are Squigs, short for "Squiggly beasts"; a variety of symbiotic races about the size of a cat but legless. These include the "Eatin Squig", a limbless blob which feeds on fungus, the "Growler Squig", a legged variety used as a sheepdog for Gretchin (in third and fourth editions referred to as a "Squighound" and available as an item of wargear), the "Attack Squig" a powerfully voracious little beast available as an item of wargear, and the "Face-eater Squig", a ferociously toothed variety used both as a weapon and for entries in face-eating contests. (The Ork and the Squig both open their mouths and bite, in a parody of a kiss. If the Ork eats the Squig, he wins. If he keels over backwards, he loses.) There is also a larger sub-species of Squig, called a "squiggoth" that ranges in size from about that of an elephant to a 60-plus-foot monstrosity capable of stomping buildings into rubble. Squiggoths are used as pack animals and in combat as the carriers of mobile fortresses.

Orks grow all through their lives; the effect is particularly notable in successful Orks. As the Ork survives combats and wins trophies, the respect of other Orks will produce in him an effect somewhat similar to adolescence in the human male: He puts on muscle, becomes more aggressive and assertive, and generally throws his weight around. If he wins the ensuing challenges to single combat, he may become a Nob, a leader or chieftain of Orks, noticeably larger and tougher than the average Greenskin. Once he begins to grow, an Ork will generally keep getting bigger and stronger until he is beaten by a bigger or more cunning Ork. Warbosses and Warlords, the rulers of continents and Orkoid empires respectively, are very large Orks indeed. Flash Gitz however are a special elite type of Ork typically armed with Big Shootas. Flash Gitz are obsessed with polishing their guns and these Orks are much larger than an average Ork. They are likely Nobs who have gathered into a group.

Orks actually consist of two symbiotic organisms that have been genetically linked by their original creators: one comparable to a terrestrial animal and the other to an algae or fungus living within the former's bloodstream and skin. An Ork's animal cells carry the genetic information of only the individual's Orkoid subspecies, but the alga has genetic information for all the varieties of Orkoid, as well as the different Oddboyz, and it helps to heal wounds by providing greater biochemical energy supplies when necessary. Ork biology lends itself well to combat: they are extraordinarily strong and tough and are naturally good fighters, always looking for a scrap.

There are two theories relating to why Orks have this unique, hybrid biology. The first is that they were adapted by their masters the Snotlings, a race that soared to intelligence upon eating a particular species of mushroom, spread across the galaxy with the help of their less intelligent Ork slaves, and were then deemed stupid again when the Orks consumed all traces of the mushroom which only grew on their home planet. The more modern belief is that they are the Krork, created as a warrior race by the Old Ones (referred to in Ork legend as the Brain Boyz) in their wars against the Necrontyr and the C'tan. The fact that an entire ecosystem can be constructed of Orkoids, and their total war-readiness, suggests that this is the more likely of the two Ork origin theories. In early forms of this theory developed by the Imperial Magos Biologis, the Brain Boyz were actually an Orkoid subspecies, along with the Orks and the Gretchin, but they are now believed by most Imperial experts to be the reptilian Old Ones who also created other psychic species like the Eldar and the Jokaero.

The Brain Boyz apparently became extinct for unknown reasons during the course of the War in Heaven, but before they passed on, they genetically engineered the Orks' DNA to include a "techno-gene". This gene develops in Orks as they grow, influencing their minds and releasing genetically encoded knowledge; in a similar way that a human baby will reflexively hold its breath under water or a horse can walk half an hour after being born, an Ork's techno gene gives it information on how to fight, operate weapons, and speak the Orky language. Ork specialists, such as Mekboyz and Painboyz, are the mechanics and surgeons of Ork society, and receive their knowledge through these techno genes. It seems this was a deliberate measure to ensure that the Orkoid race would survive in an incredibly hostile universe.

Reproduction

Orks have not only survived, they have prospered and are more numerous than even the myriad trillions of individuals who comprise humanity. This is due in part to how they reproduce; Orks release fungal spores, which grow into a plant-like womb underground that nourishes the bodies of the various Orkoid species. This is the entire basis of the Orkoid ecosystem, producing first Squigs, then Snotlings who cultivate the Squigs and the fungus they feed on, then Gretchin to build the settlements, and finally the Orks themselves. This means the Orks, wherever they go, will have an abundance of food, slaves and other resources, a moving Orkoid ecosystem that supports them as they go on their Waaaghs!

This also makes it extremely difficult to rid a planet of Orks, even if the initial invasion is defeated. Orks release spores throughout their lives, but release them massively at the moment of death. Without a nearby population of Orks, the fungus will eventually start the Orkoid life cycle anew. Decades after weathering an Ork Waaagh! settlements on a planet can find themselves faced with an unexpected attack from feral Ork tribes coming out of the wilderness. The only way to effectively remove all of the Orks on a planet is a planetary Exterminatus.

Orkoid Subspecies

The Gretchin are the Orks' slaves. Small, grasping, green creatures with the overall demeanor of a whipped dog, Gretchin are at the wrong end of everything, including the food chain. Gretchin are used to clear minefields, distract the enemy in combat, and assist Oddboyz. They are overall similar to the_Warhammer Fantasy_ Goblins. In _Gorkamorka_, it was revealed that Snotlings are actually young Gretchin. The Gretchin originally were used in swarms as in _Warhammer Fantasy_ and could even be fired out of a Shokk attack gun, but vanished from 41st Millennium battlefields with the advent of the 3rd Edition of the game. However, it is worth noting that the game_Dawn of War_, which is part of _Warhammer 40,000_ official continuity, features Gretchins as base builder/scout units.

More unusual are the Squigs. Squigs are animals that share the same general algae-based biology of the Orks and Gretchin, and are used as food, clothing, hair, and even weapons, being trained as guard Squigs and attack Squigs. A very rare breed are the Squiggoths, which are massive animals often used as beasts of burden, but also used in war where the Orks strap huge fortresses on them. It was ultimately revealed that Squigs were the result of Tyranid manipulation of Orkish gene-matter. Orks discovered the first Squigs aboard a Tyranid bio-ship and subconsciously recognized them as being "Orky", subsequently taking the little creatures home. Squigs then spread throughout Ork space. This backstory neatly explained how Squigs could appear in both Ork and Tyranid armies. Since then, Tyranid Squigs have been seen in Ripper Swarms.

The WAAAGH!

Barbaric and savage, the Greenskins spread across the galaxy like a viridian stain. They plague the battlefields of the 41st Millennium in great numbers, overruning any who stand before them in a torrent of bloodshed and usually mindless violence. And that's the way they like it!

Ork behavior is dominated by the WAAAGH!, a gestalt psychic field they generate that affects the Ork psyche, which allows Orks to instinctively recognize who is "bigga", and therefore who is in charge, since might makes right in Ork society. All Orks generate this field, and it grows stronger as the Orks enjoy themselves, generally while fighting, and as more of them congregate together in one geographical area. The WAAAGH! helps give momentum to the Orks' planetary assault campaigns, which are also known as WAAAGHs! (the Orks like to call a lot of things WAAAGH!s). Such a WAAAGH! is a cross between a holy crusade and a pub crawl, with a bit of genocide thrown in for good measure. Thousands of Orks will gather together, drawn to the power of a single dominant Ork called a Warboss or Warlord if the WAAAAGH! is particularly massive, who is bigger and more intelligent than the Orks around him. Then the Orks will set off to find an enemy to fight and defeat. Ork WAAAGHs! will sweep whole planetary systems away and destroy armies and fleets in tides of bloodlust and carnage, and only once the Orks have killed every available enemy will they start to fight amongst themselves again.

The Imperium of Man's Tech-priests have theorized that this gestalt psychic field also has a telekinetic or quantum probabilistic effect, allowing the seemingly ramshackle and poorly designed Ork technology to work as the Greenskins expect. It is believed that the reason this hypothesis came into existence is that the Imperium adopted the Adeptus Mechanicus' religious belief that aspects of a universal "Machine Spirit" inhabits all technology, and that this Machine Spirit serves Mankind at the command of the Machine God. If this is the case, without a Machine Spirit, Ork machines could not work, requiring some psychic cause to justify their often devastating effect. Furthermore, Mechanicus Genetor Lukas Anzion has noted that many Ork-built weapons will not function at all unless wielded by an Orkoid, possibly supporting this hypothesis.

Gathering the WAAAGH!

First and foremost amongst all of the Orkoid instincts is the literal need for an Ork to wage war. Orks need war just as a human orEldar needs food and water and over the long millennia of their existence the Greenskins have become very, very good at it. Due to their inherently aggressive nature, Orks constantly fight amongst themselves to prove who is the strongest, sharpening their in-born warrior skills and weeding out the weak, though this process usually poses little threat to the larger galaxy. However, Ork populations can reach a form of critical mass that can unleash a full-scale interstellar migration of Greenskins. This violent migration and the planetary assaults that result from it is what Imperial savants refer to as a WAAAGH!, a crusade of pure aggression that crashes through multiple star systems in an absolute orgy of fury and violence.

A WAAAGH! usually starts small, perhaps even as small as a single Ork, who is visited by the Orkoid deities Gork and Mork with dreams of great carnage. He will impart this vision to others of his kind through repeated blows to the head, or, if he is of a more intellectual bent, he will build a great Ork war machine like aGargant that is the very image of his savage Gods. Rumours of the coming WAAAGH! will spread through the local Orkoid society and the Orks begin to unite. New warbands join the growing throng with every passing day. An Ork Warboss will fight his way to the top of the hierarchy of this growing Greenskin horde and earn the status of a Warlord, adding the armies of those clanz he conquers to his own horde. As news of his new position spreads, the trickle of Ork reinforcements will grow into a green flood. Ork Meks will begin to collaborate on more and more outlandish projects, building ever larger war machines and weapons for the WAAAGH! Smoke-belching mobile fortresses and titanic war engines are cobbled together out of nothing more than heaps of scrap metal and the always heavy-handed enthusiasm of the Greenskins, another side-effect of the growing gestalt psychic energy of a WAAAGH!

Whilst these masterworks of destruction take form, even more Greenskins are drawn towards the horde by the impending promise of these massive war engines' use and the exciting carnage they will reap. Most of the Ork Boyzof the horde simply relish the chance to get into a really good fight. But those amongst their number who dream of becoming part of a truly awesome vista of destruction often choose the roles of crewmen and gunners on mobile Battle Fortresses and Stompas. There is always a great deal of continued rivalry between the clanz and tribes of a WAAAGH! and each strives to outdo all the others in the sheer "killyness" of their war machines. Those Meks without the resources to construct towering Stompas or Gargants, the Ork equivalents of Imperial Titans, instead create mobs of Killa Kans and Ork Dreadnoughts, banding their creations together to form armies of mechanical savages that dwarf the mobs they march beside in size and power. Others build the fleets of Fightas, Fighta-Bommerz and Bommerz that are laden with gunz and bombs that will assault their foes from the air once the battle begins.

Those Greenskins that do not aid in the construction of the WAAAGH!'s war machines seek out like-minded fellow Orks who fight in the manner that most appeals to them. The Orks call these groups Kults, of which the vehicle-obsessed Kult of Speed is the most widespread and well-recognized in the Imperium, though by no means the only Kult that exists in Ork society. The Stormboyz and Flash Gitz also represent Kults, while those Orks who are unusually sensitive to the growing pool of gestalt psychic energy surrounding a gathering WAAAGH! may becomeMadboyz. Hundreds of other Ork Warbosses will add their own armies to the cause of a new WAAAGH! as the Greenskin assault begins to spread across whole star systems rather than just a single world. Entire native planetary populations are forced into slavery to their new Greenskin masters to manufacture ammunition for the horde's guns and other materiel that the WAAAGH! requires. Crude factory-ships and war hulks are bashed together to produce further transports for the horde, while a truly large WAAAGH! may ultimately infest a Space Hulk to move from world to world or even hollow out asteroids and create the massive spaceborne Ork fortresses known as Roks. When the lure of battle can no longer be resisted, the WAAAGH!'s savagery reaches a fever pitch that can no longer be contained save by the spilling of blood in vast quantities.

The Orks who launch a WAAAGH! generally have little in the way of a coherent combat doctrine like the other major intelligent species of the galaxy. Their only goal is destruction and mayhem in as large a quantity as they can muster. The Orks are a plague upon the other civilisations of the universe, a race of genetically-engineered bioweapons whose true purpose was lost eons ago but who still carry on the fight - against anyone, at anytime - for no reason other than their own joy in destruction and slaughter. Once an Ork WAAAGH! has gathered, with one almighty bellow to the heavens from millions of Ork throats, another world will be plunged into unending war beneath a surging greenskinned tide.

Oddboyz

Although a standard Ork boy's genetically-encoded knowledge allows him to keep his weapons in working order, there is always a need for specialists who can do things that most Greenskins cannot. These "Oddboyz" develop instinctive knowledge useful for specific tasks.

**Doks** (also known as "Painboyz") are responsible for fixing injuries that even the Ork physiology can't repair, such as severed limbs and brain damage. An Ork will only go to the Dok when he has no other choice, as these Oddboyz are infamous for trying out experimental procedures (such as the greatly feared Squig brain transplant) on patients while they are under anesthesia (known as a "concussion" to other intelligent races). Doks are responsible for attaching bioniks, although sometimes they aren't paying attention and replace the wrong part of the patient's body. High-ranking Doks are known as "painbosses" and are known to be accompanied by cybork bodyguards.**Herdas** are the Oddboyz who take care of Squigs. They are not much seen on the battlefield in warbands past the feral stage, as their uses are mostly rendered obsolete by the advent of vehicles.**Mekboyz** (also known as "Mekaniaks" or just "Meks") are Ork engineers, who build all the gunz, vehicles, and other machines used by Orks. They are especially important to Speed Freeks. Important meks are known as "Big Meks", who lead groups of lesser meks armed with all variety of kustom equipment and Combi-weapons.**Pigdoks** are an odd combination of Dok and Mek, although not as skilled as either individually. They are found in Feral Ork tribes, tending the Warboars that are ridden to battle by the primitives. Their main use in battle is to provide 'doping' to increase the ferocity of the various beasts that feral Orks take to war, as well as some of the Orks themselves.**Runtherds** are the Orks who have the patience to take care of Gretchin and other slaves. Their trademark weapons are the whip and grabba stikk. They can also own slaves from every intelligent race in the galaxy except the Necrons.**Speed Freeks** are those Orks who become addicted to the need to go "real fast." These speed-obsessed Greenskins band together in their own mobs and warbands,which are full of buggies, bikes, and trukks. They belong to what Ork kultur refers to as the Kult of Speed and become known amongst other Greenskins asSpeed Freeks. Most vehicles used by Speed Freeks are painted red as, according to Ork superstition, "Da red wunz go fasta!" Speed Freeks rely on Mekboyz to build and maintain their vehicles, and sometimes a warband of Speed Freeks is even led by a Big Mek instead of a Warboss.**Weirdboyz** are the Orks' psykers. One major difference between them and the psykers of other races is that Weirdboyz draw on the power of the WAAAGH! instead of the power of the Warp, a dangerous realm full of daemons, where the other intelligent races' psykers draw their powers. However, the Waaagh! has its own perils for Ork Weirdboyz: if they soak up too much of this power, their heads explode, causing a powerful psychic backlash that can cause other Orks' heads to explode as well. Naturally, Weirdboyz avoid combat as much as possible, but the ability to gout green flame capable of melting armour and shoot bolts of lightning is too great for most warbosses to resist, and they get dragged into combat anyway. Some Weirdboyz actually become addicted to the power and seek out battles; these exceptionally dangerous individuals are known as**Warpheads**.Other Oddboyz include **Sumboyz **(bankers), **Yellerz **(Ork priests of Gork and Mork), and **Brewboyz **(cooks), all of which have an important role in so-called Ork kultur (although not on the battlefield).Society

Orks gather into various levels of organization. The first is the mob, a squad-level unit of Orks with similar ideas of how to act on the battlefield, generally led by a Nob (short for "noble," but pronounced "knob"). A number of mobs will gather together into a warband, which is roughly equivalent to an Imperial Guard company (although with a greater variation in size and strength), led by a warboss. The largest Ork organizational unit is the tribe or the klan, a group of numerous warbands all under the command of a Warboss. Different tribes can be united by a powerful Warboss known as a Warlord when he raises a WAAAGH!

Religion

Orks believe in two major gods - Gork, who is brutally kunnin', and Mork, who is kunninly brutal, the subtle distinction being that one hits you when you're not looking at him, and the other hits you hard when you are. There is a different mythology sometimes portrayed in which Gork and Mork are the gods of Defense and Attack. Orks can't agree which god plays which role, and debate about this topic, which often erupts into fighting (Although generally Gork is considered the more brutal by players of Warhammer 40,000, and Mork the more cunning, possibly due to their roles in gorkamorka, in which a gork was better at fighting, and a mork better at driving). The priesthood of these gods has no in-game representation, although the infamous Goff Warlord Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka claims to be receiving visions from both. Also, there has been some mention of Yellerz (the Ork version of a priest) although they are not seen in-game. In earlier versions a third god, Bork, appeared, but has since been dropped. Orks generally tend to distinguish between Gork and Mork as one being mean, and the other being meaner. Some religious divisions lie in determining who is meaner; another factor preventing Orks from being united. It is doubtful if the distinction between Gork and Mork means anything in Ork culture, as long as it allows them to bash something. Perhaps Gork and Mork are actually one god.

Currency

Orks use their teeth - or rather, their teef - as currency. This is quite a natural solution to inflation and income support, as Orks go through teeth in a similar manner to sharks, replacing them quite frequently, and Ork teeth do degrade over time, so it is impossible to hoard them. This keeps prices constant, ensures all Orks have at least some access to money, and allows constant values to be placed on commodities. A toof will buy a good Squig pie and a tankard of fungus beer, while a bag of teef will buy a cheap buggy. A big flashy battlewagon could cost a warboss hundreds of teef. This system also promotes aggression, as all an Ork needs to make more money is to knock teef out of another Ork's head and then collect them for himself.

Da Klanz

Ork klanz are not true, separate ethnic communities or tribes as amongst humans but rather philosophical delineations of the different varieties of Ork. Each has its own colours, markings, and ways of waging war. Orks tend to form warbands with others who follow the beliefs of the same klan, but different groups tend to be lumped together after suffering casualties during a WAAAGH! There are six klanz which tend to cover the entire spectrum of Ork lifestyles and behaviours quite well according to the Ordo Xenos' savants, though more are always waiting to be discovered amongst the teeming masses of Greenskins in the galaxy:

Bad Moons

The Bad Moons are the richest Orks around, because their teef grow faster than anyone else's. The other klanz do not mind this, because they figure that if they want more money, they can always knock a Bad Moon Ork over the head and take his teeth. This is not regarded as an unfair advantage, as any Ork big and nasty enough can simply smash the teeth out of a Bad Moon's head. The Bad Moons essentially fulfill the role of a merchant caste in what passes for Ork society, and have a reputation for showing off. They are always continuously buying, selling, swapping, and conning to get teeth. The highest ranking amongst them wear garishly decorated war banners on their backs and the richest openly flaunt their wealth by wearing necklaces of teef. They trade with other Orks to get the biggest gunz, the flashiest wargear, and the best food, but are not as concerned with close combat as other Orks. They have been noted to have a greater proportion of Weirdboyz in their ranks than other clans who use their wealth to dress flamboyantly. Unfortunately for them, they end up being dragged off to battle and used against the enemy like any other weapon. The signature mob of the Bad Moons are the Flash Gitz: Orks with devastating kustom Shootas. Kaptin Badrukk, the infamous Ork Freebooter, is a Bad Moon and was kicked out of the klan for having too many teef for his own good. Bad Moons love gold more than any other metal, and will commonly sport a couple of glinting teef in their avaricious grins. They favour strikingly patterned golden yellow and black for their wargear. Their armour and wargear is painted with gaudy patterns in the klan colours and they have more jewelry and piercings than any other klan. The Bad Moons Klan take a snarling moon on a field of flames as their klan sigil.

Blood Axes

The Blood Axes were the first to encounter the Imperium of Man. They have picked up many human tactics, such as usingcamouflage (although it may seem a bit too brightly colored to a human's eye) and retreating when they are losing ("It don't count as losing, cuz we can also come back for anuvver go, see?"). Indeed, when they do retreat, Blood Axes will in fact return with larger numbers. They trade with humans for wargear and vehicles, and have even worked as mercenaries for the Imperium at times (such as during the Massacre at Big Toof River). All of these things lead followers of other klanz to brand them as dangerously treacherous, cowardly, and downright un-Orky! Most Blood Axes are back-stabbing "Kommandoz", essentially serving as Ork special operations troops. Blood Axes wear combat fatigues and forage caps in shades of green and drab colours, commonly in camouflage patterns. This betrays the influence of Imperial military style, as do the other personal adornments commonly worn by Orks of this clan. The Blood-Axes bear the klan motif of crossed, bloodied axes.

Death Skulls

The Death Skulls are looters and plunderers who grab whatever they can from corpses on the battlefield, although they are not above "acquiring" things from other Orks who are not watching. They collect anything that might be useful, as well as grisly trophies and various lucky trinkets and charms. They are superstitious even for Orks, and often paint themselves and their wargear blue (which Orks feel is a lucky colour) to protect themselves from harm. It is not uncommon to find looted Imperial vehicles in Death Skull armies, such as Chimeras and Rhinos. When dealing with the Death Skulls, many other Ork klans will often find a few of _their _vehicles missing as well, and then suspiciously similar ones reappearing painted blue amid the ranks of the Death Skulls' vehicle pool. The symbol of the Death Skulls is the horned also use skulls, other intelligent races' teef as luck charms and have more Gretchin than most Ork tribes as they are used to scout for (and occasionally make off with) valuables.

Evil Sunz

The Evil Sunz are an Ork tribe or klan who are dedicated to speed and making as loud a noise as possible when in combat. Just as the Goffs klan loves violence and aggression, so the Evil Sunz love speed. The Evil Sunz have adopted the general Ork maxim that "Red 'uns go faster" as their klan motto. Evil Sunz prize fast vehicles like Ork Warbikes, Warbuggies and Trukks on which theirBoyz can ride to battle. To assist their highly-mobile warbands, the Evil Sunz possess a larger population than normal of Mekboyz to keep those vehicles tuned and running. By far the largest number of Ork Speed Freeks come from the Evil Sunz klan. An Ork's love of speed can easily affect his brain, to the point where an Ork becomes addicted to the thrill of a wild ride into battle. Beyond even a Speed Freak's delirium there are also Flyboyz, whose need for speed has driven them into the air in search of ever greater thrills, piloting the Ork's Fightas and Fighta-Bommerz. Members of this klan wear at least one item of red clothing at all times, which makes their appearance quite distinctive. Red is a hard colour for Orks to come by as few of their regular enemies have red uniforms to loot and rip up, and most red dye is used for red paint. The use of red face paint is another expression of this klan's obsession with the colour red. Once again, they resort to the use of blood when the red paint runs out. Evil Sunz are distinguished by their use of bright colours, especially red and yellow. They like flame patterns and many sport goggles and driving gloves, whether they are driving a vehicle or not. The Evil Sunz are also found as an Orc tribe of the same name on the Warhammer World of _Warhammer Fantasy_.

Goffs

The Goffs are the toughest and most brutal Orks to be found in the galaxy, roughly equivalent to elite _Warhammer Fantasy_ Black Orcs. The Goffs are the biggest, meanest and most brutish of all their kind, and that's saying something since they are Orks. Of all the Ork klanz, the Goffs are the most inspired by the thrill and thunder of battle. Goffs will take any excuse to start a brawl, even amongst themselves. As a result, the Goffs are specialists in hand-to-hand combat who prefer their battles up-close and personal. They are particularly fond of the Stikkbomb, because these Ork grenades are hurled by hand and are good for close combat in trenches, ruins, bunkers and ratholes. Goffs usually carry a brace of hefty Stikkbombz stuffed down their black jackboots. Goff armies are notorious for the sheer number of Ork infantry they muster in times of war. A mob of Goff Boyz is usually at least twenty strong, and a true Goff horde has a hundred times that number at its heart. When the Goffs go to war, the ground shakes to the incessant thump of thousands of steel-capped boots. The Goffs boast the greatest numbers of Nobz and Stormboyz amongst any of the Greenskin klanz. This is because the Goffs are the most militaristic of all the Orks. All Orks love war and combat, and wage war as a way of life, but of the Goffs it can truly be said that they live only for war. Goffs dress mostly in black, with some white checks for relief, as they see bright colors as being un-Orky. Their symbol is the black bull's head, and Goff Nobz almost always wear big horns on their helmets. Ghazghkull Thraka is a member of the Goff klan.

Snakebites

The Snakebites prefer ancient Orky tradition to advanced technology, shunning things like forcefields and armoured vehicles in favour of protecting themselves with war paint and riding into battle on huge boars wielding spearz and choppas. Depending on how fundamentalist their anti-technology beliefs are, the Snakebites may choose to remain as Feral Orks even after their civilisation possesses the technical knowledge required to advance to an industrial state. Orks of this klan are covered in swirling red tattoos, like coiled snakes. They are also known to cultivate Hair Squigs so they can decorate themselves with extravagant crests and topknots. Other common features are wolfskin headgear and wolf pelts, which add to their wild and primitive appearance. One of this klan's most distinctive elements of dress is their snake belts, which are fastened with metal buckles in the form of a snake. The totem of this clan is the venomous serpent. This klan's whelps are toughened by allowing venomous snakes to bite them, hence the name "Snakebites" given to them by the other klanz, which they adopted for their own.

The Rok Claw Clan

The Rok Claw clan is a minor clan of Feral Orks later led by theWarboss Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter. They first appeared in Dawn of War - Soulstorm. They live on the world of Kaurava II and use Rok Claw Mountain as their main fortress city. They launched a number of campaigns against Imperial worlds such as Lorn Vand Kronus but were driven back by the forces of the Imperium of Man.

Ork Technology

Ork technology appears ramshackle and slapped-together (it often is), but is as potent as any weapons used by the Imperium or other races. Ork technology (or "teknologee") is characterised by a constant stream of poorly thought-out experimentation and attempts to constantly outdo the competition to build the biggest gun, the largest gargant (a huge land-based walker), or the fastest buggy, and also mainly by the fact that in many cases the only reason it works at all is because of the Orks' minor psychic powers. This means that if enough Orks think it will work, it usually will. Many a Techmarine has opened an Ork slugga to find it to just be a box with bolts and bits of metal in it. Therefore, Ork technology is not uniform, lending Ork warbands a cobbled-together, slapdash and random appearance. Ork mechanics ("Mekboyz") are specialists in the field of producing powerful force fields that can protect against damage, and battlefield repairs. They can salvage almost any burnt-out wreck, and many Ork vehicles have been reported destroyed dozens of times, only to be cobbled back together, given a fresh lick of paint (if even that), and sent back into the fray. The tough, resilient nature of Orks means they accept crude bionics, transplants, and other medical shenanigans being performed on them with ease. Some Orks build inventions that fly for airborne bombardment, which they call Fighta Bommas, while some Orks loot vehicles from their enemies.

Ork weapons include Sluggas, Choppas, Burnas (Ork Flamers), andKombi-weapons like Shoota/Skorcha,Shoota/Rokkit Launcha and the twin-linked Shoota.They also make use of Stikbomz, which are crude Ork grenades. However, due to the highly experimental and competitive nature of Ork technology, some weapons and wargear they have created are as effective and deadly as they are unique and random. Prime examples are the Shokk Attack Gun (a gun built by an experienced (read 'lucky-to-be-alive') Mekboy, called a Big Mek, which creates a tunnel through the Warp itself, (which the Ork have put to good use by firing Snotlings, and occasionally the Big Mek firing the gun, at the enemy), the downright dangerous Dethkoptas (crude helicopters, fitted with oversized weapons, blades and bombs and piloted by renegade Speed Freeks for whom the ground is a bit tame) and the shoulder-mounted Deffguns (created when an Ork approaches a Mek with some of the enemy's guns he found on the battlefield, and asks the Mek to "make dem mor killy")


	7. Chapter 7

Imperium of Man

**Head of State:**Emperor of Mankind**Capital:**Terra**Official languages:**Low Gothic, High Gothic**Governing body:**Senatorum Imperialis (High Lords of Terra)**State Religions:**Imperial Cult; Cult Mechanicus**Major Species:**Mankind**Military forces**  
Imperial Guard  
Imperial Navy  
Adeptus Astartes  
Collegia Titanica  
Adepta Sororitas  
Adeptus Custodes  
Adeptus Arbites"_The martyr's grave is the keystone of the Imperium._"— The _Liber Imperialis_

The **Imperium of Man** is a galaxy-spanning interstellarhuman empire, the ultimate authority for the majority of the human race in the Milky Way Galaxy in the 41st Millennium AD, and is ruled by the living God who is known as theEmperor of Mankind. However, there are other humanoid species classified as Imperial citizens, mainly mutantoffshoots of genetic base-line humans who are known asAbhumans and include such human sub-races as theOgryns, Ratlings and Squats. The founder and ruler of the Imperium is the god-like Emperor of Mankind, the most powerful human psyker ever born. The Emperor founded the Imperium over 10,000 Terran years ago, and the Emperor continues, at least nominally, to rule the Imperium as both its political master and its primary religious figure, though his badly damaged body is interred within the cybernetic life support mechanisms of the arcane device known as theGolden Throne. Because of this, the Emperor is incapable of interacting with others on a day-to-day basis.

The Imperium of Man is a war-torn empire, teetering on the brink of collapse. For 10,000 Terran years it has been ruled by the deathless Emperor, a being of incredible power, to whom thousands of souls are sacrificed daily. The peoples of the Imperium live in a place where Daemons are real, mutation is frequent and death is a constant companion. To be alive in the 41st Millennium is to know that the universe is a terrifying and hostile place. It is a place where you are but one amongst billions and, no matter how heroic your death, you will not be missed. A truly vast domain, the Imperium is spread amongst the many stars of the galaxy. Its territories encompass untold millions of stars and countless more human lives. In its name, terrible wars are fought and desperate sacrifices made, yet even this river of carnage and blood is a small price to pay, for the Imperium is the guardian of Mankind. Were it to pass into nothingness, so too would the human race, destroyed by enemies uncountable, to the braying laughter of the Dark Gods.

The Imperium is the largest and currently most powerful political entity in the galaxy, consisting of at least 1,000,000 human-settled worlds dispersed across most of the Milky Way Galaxy. Consequently, an Imperial planet might be separated from its closest neighbour by hundreds or even thousands of light years. As a stellar empire, the size of the Imperium cannot be measured in terms of contiguous territory, but only in the number of planetary systems under its control.

Several alien species and forces (the Forces of Chaos, the Tyranids, the Eldar, the Dark Eldar, the Orks, the Tau, and the Necrons) challenge the supremacy of the Imperium and humanity's predominant place in the galaxy. From within its own creaking and increasingly stagnat and repressive edifice, the Imperium is threatened more insidiously by rebellion, mutation, dangerous psykers and subversive Chaos Cults. However, despite its myriad problems, without the admittedly authoritarian and often harsh protection of the Imperium, Mankind as a whole would have fallen prey to the countless perils that threaten it. Without the Imperium and Mankind's faith in the Emperor who guides it, the human race would have become extinct long ago.

The Imperium was founded by the Emperor of Mankind, also called "The God-Emperor" and the "Master of Mankind", at the end of the Age of Strife, in the 30th Millennium AD. The Emperor, an immortal being born around the year 8000 BC in central Anatolia on Old Earth, was the collective reincarnation of all the human shamans who possessed true psychic abilities during the Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages. Imbued with their combined psychic, physical and intellectual power, the Emperor was born an immortal being of unparalleled physical strength, psychic ability, charisma and intellect. The Emperor helped humanity as a whole survive and prosper through the long millennia. In various eras of human history he intervened through various personas, some of them well-known historical personages, to guide Mankind, though such interventions were always brief and shrouded in legend and historical mystery. At the end of the Age of Strife the man who would become the Emperor finally took a direct, public, and permanent role in shaping the future of humanity, believing that the damage done to the human race by 5,000 years of terror, isolation and violence could not be reversed unless he openly guided humanity as its leader. As such, he shed all his prior identities and simply revealed himself in the 30th Millennium on Terra as the Emperor of Mankind, determined to unite the entire species under his stern but benevolent rule and replace superstition, fear, poverty and intolerance with reason, science, progress and hope.

Prehistory

The Age of Strife, also sometimes called Old Night, was a 5,000-year-long period of anarchy, war, and destructive technological regression from the 25th to the 30th Millenniums that brought Mankind to the brink of extinction - and reversed the highly advanced scientific and technological discoveries made by the galaxy-spanning interstellar human civilisation of the Dark Age of Technology that had preceded it. The Age of Strife was caused by the negative psychic and physical effects of the vicious Warp Storms that ravaged large portions of the galaxy beginning in the 25th Millennium, which were the "ripples" in realspace of the psychic gestation of the new Chaos God Slaanesh in the Immaterium. Slaanesh was forming within the Warp as a result of the growing hedonism and utter excess of the ancient Eldar empire in the millennia before its Fall. One result of the Warp Storms was the impossibility of faster-than-light travel or telepathic interstellar communication through the ravaged currents of the Warp, which led to the subsequent isolation of human colony worlds and star systems separated by multi-light-year distances. Human civilisation in the colonised portions of the galaxy fragmented, and where it survived, it took on wildly different forms. On Earth, the planetary economy collapsed with the loss of interstellar trade and communication with the rest of humanity and the social order broke down. Wars, rebellion, and disease were rampant. Vast swathes of the advanced scientific and technical knowledge accumulated in the previous millennia was lost or forgotten, and a slow descent into barbarism seemed inevitable. Brutal warlords emerged, who carved out new kingdoms to serve as their fiefdoms. The emergence of these often brutal neo-feudal kingdoms, the new nations of the people later termed "techno-barbarians" by Imperial historians, imposed an uneasy peace on the Earth that was frequently interrupted by feudal conflicts. The human race seemed on the brink of extinction at the start of the 30th Millennium, when the man who would become known as the Emperor of Mankind once more inserted himself into the affairs of humanity.

The Great Crusade

The Emperor sensed that the Warp Storms that had marked the Age of Strife were starting to subside, and that this offered an opportunity for Mankind to reunite in pursuit of a new Golden Age. The Emperor first emerged to unify all the techno-barbarian states of Terra under his rule through either diplomacy or the waging of the brutal military campaigns later called the Unification Wars against the techno-barbarians tribes that ruled vast swathes of the Earth's surface. These wars were waged with soldiers who had been genetically-engineered by the Emperor's genius to be faster and stronger than base-line humans. Such warriors would provide the early foundation from which he would later decide to create the Primarchs and and the Space Marines. After conquering the last of the independent techno-barbarian states of Terra, the Emperor also secured the allegiance of the Cult Mechanicus of Mars who controlled the most advanced remaining industrial fabrication and scientific research facilities in the human-settled galaxy and the scientific research installations and spacedocks of Luna. These three factions, Terra, Mars andLuna, signed the Treaty of Mars that created a new government, the Imperium of Man, marrying the Terran military might of the Emperor with the industrial strength of Mars and the Mechanicus. Now possessed of the needed manpower and materiel to make his dream a reality, the Emperor mobilised the resources of Terra and Mars to launch a vast new military campaign intended to reunite the whole of Mankind, dispersed across the galaxy, under his rule. This campaign, the Great Crusade, marked the beginning of the period that would be known as the Age of the Imperium. A vast fleet of starships was built in orbit of Mars, with which the Emperor's armies set out to reconquer the galaxy for Mankind.

But to lead his campaign, the Emperor had used his advanced knowledge of genetic engineering and the psychic arts to create the Primarchs, 20 superhuman military commanders possessed of preternatural physical, mental and social attribtues who had been created through the fusion of his genetic material with the power of the Warp. The Emperor had known that the greatest foe of his plans to reunite the human race and bring Order to the galaxy would be the Ruinous Powers of Chaos and their daemonic servants. He had sought to protect his gestating Primarchs from the Dark Gods while they grew in their gestation capsules in the Emperor's secret laboratories deep beneath the Himalayan Mountains, but the Chaos Gods saw through all his wards and protections. They opened a Warp portal in the Emperor's laboratory and stole the infant Primarchs away from Terra, scattering them across the galaxy and tainting many of them with the power of Chaos.

But the Emperor would not be deterred by this tragedy. Using what remained of the Primarchs' genetic material, he proceeded to transform ordinary Terran men into a new corps of superhuman warriors who would lead Mankind back out into the stellar void. These men were the Emperor's Astartes, the Space Marine Legions, and they were men who knew no fear.

During the 200 years that the Great Crusade spread the Imperium across the galaxy, the Emperor slowly made contact once more with all of his scattered gene-sons, the Primarchs, and to each he gave command of the Space Marine Legion that had been created from that Primarch's specific genome. Horus was the first of the Primarchs to be rediscovered, on the barren Mining World of Cthonia only a few light years from Terra itself. Horus campaigned with the Emperor for 30 Terran years before the next of the Primarchs was recovered, and during that time the two developed a special bond, the deep affection between a father and his favoured son. The Astartes Legions, combined with the might of the Imperial Army (which was later separated into the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy after the Horus Heresy), reunited thousands upon thousands of human worlds into one interstellar civilisation, in the name, and under the rule of, the Emperor and the Imperium of Man. But the Great Crusade was ended abruptly by the corruption and treachery of the Imperial Warmaster Horus, who was both the Primarch of the Sons of Horus Space Marine Legion and the overall commander of the Great Crusade, an honour that had been granted to him by the Emperor, who had sought to leave the campaign so that he might return to Terra and oversee a project intended to open up the Eldar Webway to human use.

But Horus and many of the other Primarchs deeply resented the Emperor's absence from the Great Crusade and were even more disturbed by his attempts to replace the direct rule of the Imperium by the Emperor and his Primarchs with a bureaucracy of normal humans. Riven by jealousy and ambition, Horus proved to be easy prey for the tempations of the Chaos Gods, who falsely convinced the Warmaster that the Emperor had intended all along to simply use the Primarchs and the rest of humanity to transform himself into a God. Enraged at this notion, the Ruinous Powers then promised Horus their support in his bid to seize the Imperium for himself. Horus ultimately convinced 9 other Primarchs and their Space Marine Legions to join his cause and serve Chaos. He instigated the terrible Horus Heresy rebellion against the Emperor and eventually one-half of the Imperium's vast military forces, as well as elements of the Adeptus Mechanicus, rallied to the Traitor's cause, unleashing the greatest conflict Mankind had ever known upon an unsuspecting galaxy.

The Horus Heresy

The Horus Heresy was fought across the galaxy for more than 7 years, beginning with the terrible Battle of Istvaan IIIwhere Horus cleansed 4 of his Traitor Legions of their remaining Loyalist elements and the Drop Site Massacre ofIstvaan V, where Horus and his Traitor Legions slaughtered three whole Loyalist Space Marine Legions with the worst kind of treachery. Horus, seeking to achieve a swift and decisive victory over the Emperor after pledging his soul to the service of the Ruinous Powers of the Warp, lead the Traitor forces directly to Terra over the next 7 years, slaughtering billions of people and destroying much of what the Emperor had built over the last 2 centuries. In a final decisive battle between the Emperor and Horus at the end of the great Battle of Terra, the Warmaster was slain, leading to the end of the rebellion when the Forces of Chaos naturally began to turn on one another without Horus' ambition, titanic charisma and influence to keep them united in pursuit of a single goal. Over the next several years, the Traitor Legions and their Chaotic allies slowly withdrew from Imoperial space, eventually fleeing Imperial pursuit into the great Warp rift in the Segmentum Obscurus known as the Eye of Terror.

However, the Master of Mankind was himself mortally wounded during the battle, which took place on Horus' Chaos-twisted Battle Barge, the _Vengeful Spirit_, in orbit above Terra. The Emperor's body was recovered by the PrimarchRogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists Legion and according to his last instructions, the Emperor was placed on the life-preserving Golden Throne, the arcane artefact from the Dark Age of Technology that served as both a psychic amplifier and a potent cybernetic life-support system that the Emperor originally intended to use to create a portal into the Webway. For over 10,000 years now, the Emperor has remained immobile on the Golden Throne. Though physically a broken, dying carcass incapable of movement and unable to communicate normally with the outside world save through the rare telepathic contact and the Emperor's Tarot, the Emperor's psychic will, almost omnipotent, extends through the Immaterium across the million worlds of the Imperium. It produces the psychic beacon of the Astronomican that is used by all Imperial starships to travel through the Warp, soul-binds weaker psychic humans to make them useful Sanctioned Psykers of the Imperium while leeching the lives from otherpsykers to sustain his psychic presence, and struggles against the encroaching daemons of the Warp, protecting Mankind from their realspace predations. In all this, the Emperor endures the constant agony of his dying body only through a sheer exercise of will, and the sustenance that the life forces of the sacrificed psykers provide. Yet the masses of humanity worship the Emperor as both a God and their only saviour. It is an article of faith in the Imperial Cult that against all the threats faced by the human race, only the Emperor protects...

Imperial Stagnation

The Imperium of Man at the end of the 41st Millennium is a dystopic society by the standards of the men and women of the 21st Century. The unexpected horrors of the Horus Heresy fatally weakened the nascent Imperium, but more importantly, starting with the Emperor himself, claimed some of its best warriors, technocrats, administrators and diplomats - who fell either in battle with the Traitor Legions or were corrupted by Chaosthemselves. But perhaps the most significant consequence seems to have been that like the Emperor, the Imperium itself entered a slowly decaying stasis, while Chaos and the Imperium's myriad xenos enemies are ascendant.

It is known that the period immediately following the Heresy was one of near-anarchy, and that the continuity of the Imperium was not assured. Roboute Guilliman, the Primarch of the Ultramarines, was one of those credited with taking decisive action that kept the Imperium together, possibly with the help of other Loyalist forces and of newly-created Imperial organisations such as the Inquisition and the Officio Assassinorum (it is known that at least one Assasin Temple was already operating with Imperial sanction, and had succesfully assassinated Konrad Curze, thePrimarch of the Night Lords Traitor Legion). Ironically, while the Imperium survived, it also seems to be fulfilling predictions or prophesies made about its future by a variety of Chaotic enemies, Traitors, and more neutral or potentially sympathetic observers like the Eldar. Supreme among such ironic twists is the deification of the Emperor and the attendant creation of the Ecclesiarchy, the galaxy-wide church dedicated to the Imperial Creed that teaches that the Emperor is the God of Mankind. The Emperor's express purpose and one of the pillars of the pre-Heresy Imperial doctrine known as the Imperial Truth that was spread by the Imperial forces during the Great Crusade was the elimination of superstition and of belief in supernatural powers, gods, and religion and the promotion of reason and science. It is worth noting that among the ploys used by the Ruinous Powers to turn Horus to their service were uncannily accurate visions of the post-Heresy Imperium in which the Emperor and his Loyalist Primarchs were worshiped by the Imperial masses as a God and his saints, respectively. Of course, unknown to Horus, this was a future _caused_ by his actions, not prevented by them.

Another measure of the Imperium's stagnation has been the lack of real technological progress over the last 10,000 Terran years and a fear of unknown or ancient technology that sometimes borders on irrational superstition. It seems that the last major era of human technological advancement was the era of discoveries and technological applications made during the planning and execution of the Great Crusade.

In short, the Imperium has become a repressive regime marked by extreme levels of superstition, political repression, religious intolerance, bureaucratisation, economic stagnation, technological regression and inequality. Corruption and injustice are rampant and human life is increasingly worth very little in a galaxy teeming with literally trillions of people. But though the Imperium is repressive and stagnant, it is also the only thing holding the enemies of Mankind at bay. Many in the highest levels of the Imperium know that it must reform if it is to survive, but they fear that the cure might very well kill the patient. And in small pockets of the Imperium there are men and women willing to shoulder the burden of making their small corner of the universe a better place for all by shouldering the responsibilities and the burdens of heroes.

But recently, in 999.M41, the Adeptus Mechanicus has secretly reported to the High Lords of Terra that in addition to all the other problems besetting the Imperium, the mechanisms of the Golden Throne are malfunctioning and they no longer possess the necessary knowledge to repair them. Whether the nobles of the Imperium like it or not, a terrible change is coming...

The Imperium covers a wide area of galactic space, sprawling over countless worlds. There are few universal constants amongst these wildly varying planets. Culture, language and even the human form appear in seemingly infinite variation across the galaxy. One of the few constants (at least amongst those worlds of the Imperium that are aware of its existence) is the network of Imperial feudal obligation and responsibility. Each Imperial planet owes fealty to aPlanetary Governor. This individual in turn renders to the Imperium's priesthood a tithe of men, materials and loyalty. The governor is also expected to reject enemies of the Imperium, and to ensure that thepsykers upon his planet do not fall into witchery or daemonic possession. In return, the governor can call upon the Priesthood of Earth (or Adeptus Terra as they are properly known) in times of dire threat and request aid. The Adeptus Terra comprises a bewildering variety of departments, bureaus, sub-divisions and offices, each of which deal with a particular aspect of maintaining the continuity of the Imperium. Each order has an obligation to care for its given area of control.

This weight of responsibility grows as feudal obligation passes up through a mind-numbing array of ranks within each Adepta. From lowly scribes computing a hive world's annual nutra-slurry yield to mighty Sector Commanders overseeing the assemblage of a Crusading fleet, vassalage and power passes ever upwards to the titular heads of the Imperium, the High Lords of Terra. These powerful individuals rule from ancient Terra in the Emperor's name. Based on Terra itself, the Emperor of Mankind is a silent being of awesome power. His withered carcass is cradled within an arcane artefact of incredibly advanced design from the Dark Age of Technology. This Golden Throne, as it is known, sustains the Emperor's life force whilst He guards humanity from the Daemonic beings that would destroy Mankind utterly. For hundreds of centuries He has fought this psychic battle and for hundreds of centuries mankind has offered Him their fealty, worship and devotion.

The Imperium is still nominally ruled by the Emperor of Mankind as an absolute monarch. However, since his ascension to the Golden Throne, the duty of actual high-level governing of the Imperium falls to the Senatorum Imperialis - the Imperial Senate, formed by the 12 High Lords of Terra. The identities and responsibilities of these High Lords may vary, as individuals inevitably die and their influence grows and wanes, but its members are always the leaders and representatives of the most powerful Imperial organisations.

Ultimately, the High Lords are in control of the Imperium as a whole, and are responsible for maintaining the functioning of the Imperium through the Adeptus Terra and the Imperial Commanders who govern each Imperial world, sub-sector, sector and Segmentum. However it is not feasible to maintain a completely centralised government over such vast interstellar distances, even with faster-than-light travel and telepathic communication. This means that the Imperium is structured like a neo-feudal confederacy, with the planetary rulers acting as feudal lords subject to the higher authority of the Adeptus Terra and responsible for providing men to the Imperial Guard, but largely free to run their worlds day-to-day as they see fit. Therefore, many Imperial worlds are left to fend for themselves without any direct involvement of the central government save in a time of crisis.

The flow of information in the Imperium is tightly controlled, with several Imperial bodies withholding information (chief among these is the Inquisition, an ever-present Censor) or engaging in misinformation and propaganda (such as theEcclesiarchy among others). Other organisations zealously protect information that could be used for the benefit of the Imperium as a whole, such as the widespread hoarding of technological and scientific information that is the common practice of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The censorship has been justified by the terrible and dangerous nature of some of this information, and by the sheer immensity of the task of governing the Imperium.

The stellar empire that is the realm of the Emperor is so massive and sprawling that it includes a wide variety of diverse worlds, ranging from pastoral Agri-worlds to jungle planets inhabited by Neolithic savages to polluted ecumenopoleis, great hive cities that are home to billions of people that in some cases cover entire planets. For example, the world of Gudrun is similar to an idyllic 18th Century Georgian-era Great Britain, with stately manors controlling vast estates of rolling green hills studded with small agricultural villages, while Catachan is a hellishDeath World covered in a deadly jungle that is populated by giant carnivorous plants and animals (see Planets of Warhammer 40,000).

Most of the organisations or organs comprising the Imperium's government are divisions of the vast Adeptus Terra(also referred to as the Priesthood of Earth), the great bureaucracy of the Imperial government. The priesthood which serves the Lord of humanity is often referred to as "the right hand of the Emperor". It falls to the Adeptus Terra to interpret His will and minister to the Imperium. Many hundreds of thousands of souls labour across the galaxy to serve this vast organisation. There are numerous ancient institutions that make up the priesthood, each with various names on various planets. These varying Adepta, as they are traditionally known, each have a specific function to carry out in the Emperor's name.

There are countless divisions within the Adeptus Terra, and some are so secretive that their existence is known only to a few officials at the very top of the massive Imperial hierarchy. Perhaps the most well-known of the "secret" organisations is the Inquisition, the Imperium's secret police, which was created at the start of the Horus Heresy by the Emperor's regent, Malcador the Sigillite, to seek out any hidden threat to the Imperium from without or within. The existence of the other secret Imperial organisations is known only to the higher Imperial echelons. For example, one of the most secretive of Imperial organs is the Officio Assassinorum, the arm of the Imperium tasked with carrying out assassinations deemed necessary to the Imperium's security and survival. Other organisations are secret enough that nothing other than the fact that they exist is known, such as the saboteurs of the Officio Sabatorum and the Templars Psykologis, who carry out psychological warfare operations.

The most important and well-known Imperial Adepta include:

The **Adeptus Administratum**, which is responsible for the day-to-day administrative and bureaucratic functions of the entire Imperium. The Administratum is the largest division of the Adeptus Terra, and contains among its teeming numbers of Adepts countless scribes and petty officials. It administrates the Imperium at every level, assessing tithes and taxes, conducting population censuses, recording and planning and even delineating which threats to the Imperium must be dealt with and by which of the Imperium's myriad military forces. The Administratum consists of innumerable subdivisions, offices and departments. Needless to say, its servants are legion. At the will of the Adeptus Terra, the Administratum collects the Imperial tithe, sends out colonists, mobilises the military, catalogues planets and much, much more. Truly stultifying levels of bureaucracy exist within the Administratum and some wayward souls believe that the Imperium survives despite, rather than because of, its efforts. The Administratum has become synonymous with the Adeptus Terra in many places and, incorrectly, the terms are often used interchangeably. The faceless servants of the Administratum can be found all over the Imperium, ensuring that all things are accomplished in the correct manner, even if that may take a thousand years.The **Departmento Munitorum**, itself officially a department of the Adeptus Administratum, which is responsible for supplying the armaments, materiel and basic logistics for the Imperial Guard across the galaxy.**Adeptus Astra Telepathica** is the Imperium's network of Astropaths, the Sanctioned Psykers who are responsible for telepathically transmitting faster-than-light messages through the Immaterium and maintainingMankind's fragile network of interstellar communications across the galaxy. Blessed are the blind, for they have looked upon the glorious light of the Emperor directly and no true servant of the Golden Throne could ask for more. Through the agonising ritual of soul-binding, these psykers have been gifted with a small portion of the Emperor's own incredible will. Thus protected from the worst evils of predation by Warp entities, these unseeing servants of Terra can fulfil their primary function, preserving communication between the far-flung worlds of the Imperium.The **Adeptus Astronomica** is the Adepta responsible for maintaining the Astronomican which is used by themutant psykers known as Navigators to navigate all Imperial starships, military or civilian, through the Warp. The Black Ships of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica bring thousands of psykers to the birthplace of Mankindevery day and many of those so tithed find themselves contributing to the vast psychic choir of the Astronomican. This steady beacon burns bright in the Warp; it is the Emperor's will manifest, shining from Terra, and guides Navigators across the Imperium. The process of lending their psychic power to focus the beam quickly leaves the choristers as lifeless husks, but they give themselves willingly, for without the Astronomican the Imperium would cease to exist.The **Navis Nobilite** is the Imperial aristocracy that is comprised of noble familes of mutant Navigators who pilot all Imperial vessels, military or commercial, through the constantly shifting dangers of the Warp and were the first known humans to display psychic abilities during the Dark Age of Technology.The **Adeptus Mechanicus** is the priesthood of technicians and scientists dedicated to the religion of the Cult Mechanicus who build and maintain all advanced Imperial technology, vehicles, starships, and weapons of war and whose headquarters is located on Mars. The Adeptus Mechanicus believes that all knowledge in the universe is a sacred emanation of the Machine God and that the Emperor of Mankind is His Omnissiah. Needless to say, the Tech-priests and Adepts of the Mechanicus are viewed as only slightly better than the average heretic to the Priests of the Ecclesiarchy. Outside of Mars, the Mechanicus controls all of the Imperium's Forge Worlds, the planets where the production of most of its advanced technological items is done. The domains of the Adepts of Mars exist semi-autonomously within the Imperium, an empire within an empire, a right given to them by the Emperor Himself when he signed the Treaty of Mars that created the modern Imperium in the late 30th Millennium. They are the guardians of technology, the magi of machinery. It is theirs alone to know how to coax forth the life of a sun in a plasma containment field, how best to apply the blessings of activation and maintenance to the massive Titan war machines, how to ensure that the engines of the Emperor's starships run smooth and true. The Adepts of Mars worship the Emperor in the guise of the Machine God. To them, Mankind is in a fallen state from the height of its powers during the Dark Age of Technology, when the secrets of the universe were known to all. Knowledge then, lies in the past and the Adeptus Mechanicus will go to any lengths to uncover the great secrets of antiquity, scouring the universe for any scrap of information from their holy book—the Standard Template Construct system. They hold that, were the knowledge contained within the ancient STC database to be restored in full, it would reveal all of the powers of the hallowed past. The Tech-Priests venerate machines and regard them as superior to flesh. Many of them believe that the Machine God desires them to shed this weakness and so they often sport numerous bionic modifications. These mechanical enhancements add to their air of otherness and further help to set them apart from the rest of humanity. Through rune and hammer, the Tech-Adepts are the wards of the arcane and they guard their knowledge jealously. But for all their might, they are not beyond the watchful gaze of the Inquisition.The **Adeptus Custodes** are the genetically-emgineered superhumans who serve as the guardians of the Emperor's physical form. They are essentially the Emperor's bodyguards and royal guardsmen within theImperial Palace on Terra and they are considered the greatest warriors of the Imperium, more powerful than even the Astartes of the Space Marines. However, despite their skill in battle they very rarely ever venture beyond the confines of Terra. These are among the mightiest warriors in all the Imperium, the praetorians of the Emperor. They stand ever-vigilant outside the brazen doors which seal His holy chamber. They are entirely beyond reproach and they are among the few in the Imperium over whom the Inquisition has no power. They never leave the inner sanctums of the Imperial Palace and serve from birth to death within its hallowed halls. Yet they are among the few servants of Mankind who will ever look upon the Emperor directly, and for that they receive blessings beyond all measure.**Adeptus Arbites** - The Adeptus Arbites are the guardians of the _Lex Imperia_ - Imperial Law. It is given to them to maintain order amongst the higher echelons of Imperial governance - wherever a Planetary Governor seeks to abuse his rule, wherever populist unrest seeks to unseat the rightful dominion of the Imperium, wherever thoughts of personal gain at the Emperor's expense cross the minds of the ruling classes, there you will find the dogged agents of the Lawgivers. The Arbites enforces Imperial Law across the galaxy and its Arbitrators possess the right to serve as judge, jury and executioners on every Imperial world.**Officio Assassinorum** - The Officio Assassinorum is the most covert of all the known Imperial agencies, whose assassins are responsible for removing the key leaders of any enemy of the Imperium as determined by the High Lords of Terra - whether that enemy is a threat from without or within.**The Imperial Inquisition** - The Imperium is assailed by countless enemies both from within and without. The attentions of unclean xenos, the invidious influences of the misguided followers of the Ruinous Powers, planetary unrest, mutation, rogue psykers, rebellious Imperial lords and more all work constantly to bring the Imperium down, which will lead to the ultimate extinction of Mankind. Yet somehow it survives and humanity endures. The Inquisition is one of the many reasons for the persistence of Man in an extremely hostile universe. Known as the "left hand of the Emperor", the Inquisition operates across the Imperium and beyond to suppress and eliminate those forces that would destroy the holy dominion of Mankind over the galaxy. Inquisitors are empowered to go anywhere and do anything —- whatever they must to ensure the survival of the Imperium. Their Inquisitorial Rosetta opens all doors, and even the vaunted Planetary Governors must acquiesce to their demands without complaint or delay, lest they be themselves regarded as suspect. They will commit acts, no matter how vile, to maintain the unchanging integrity of the Imperium, and they will put whole planets to death in order to see that this is so. The members of the Inquisition vary enormously in physical appearance, methodology and mentality. Some operate alone and in secret, hidden from the eyes of the common man, while others operate openly and carry dozens of acolytes and agents in their cadre. What they do have in common is that they answer only to their Order, and each Order answers only to the Emperor. Their efforts can be checked by no Adepta and they are utterly, fanatically devoted to the defence of the Imperium. Even the most loyal and honest Imperial citizen is likely to break into a cold sweat on learning that the Inquisition is nearby - and that suits its members perfectly. The Inquisition is itself divided into three major Orders: the Ordo Malleus, which hunts daemons and those corrupted by the Ruinous Powers of Chaos; theOrdo Xenos which eliminates the threat that other intelligent alien civilisations present to humanity's rule of the galaxy; and the Ordo Hereticus which hunts down mutants, heretics of the Imperial Cult, and all those who would threaten the Imperium from within-including within the Ecclesiarchy itself. The Inquisition's agents necessarily exist and operate beyond the control of the Adeptus Terra, since part of the Inquisition's role involves rooting out corruption and gross incompetence from within the highest levels of the Imperium itself. Inquisitors ultimately answer only to the Emperor and to themselves and they are perhaps the most powerful organisation within the Imperium after the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes.The **Adeptus Ministorum** is the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Imperial Cult that promulgates and maintains control of the Imperial Creed and the galaxy-spanning faith of the God-Emperor of Mankind. The Adeptus Ministorum is not formally part of the Adeptus Terra. Rather it is a sister organisation which works hand-in-glove with the Priesthood of Earth. The Adeptus Ministorum derives its power and authority from the common Imperial belief in the Emperor's divinity. Also known as the Ecclesiarchy, after its high priest, the Ecclesiarch, the Adeptus Ministorum is vast and powerful. Its duty is to guide and interpret the innumerable ways that humanity has found to worship the Emperor, shepherding the myriad worlds of man along the unsteady path that lies between heresy and true devotion. Whole worlds lie within its administration and on many others it represents the most powerful Imperial institution. Like the Administratum, the Ecclesiarchy is a complex and byzantine organisation. A bewildering hierarchy of priests, confessors, cardinals, novices, clerics, bishops and missionaries all owe fealty to the Ecclesiarch in the Ecclesiarchical Palace on Terra. Just as varied are the various roles within the Ministorum, from wandering missionaries, to charismatic preachers and theosophical scholars. Two of the most famous institutions within the Adeptus Ministorum are the training orphanages of the Schola Progenium and the Battle-Sisters of the Orders Militant of the Adepta Sororitas.Imperial Military Forces

Mankind has always excelled at the art of war, and the Emperor's armies are spread across the galaxy. The threat or effects of war are never far away, no matter where you go in the Imperium. Mankind seeks to purge the stars of its enemies, and the bloody carnage it wreaks in doing so shows no sign of abating. The Imperium's military is at once mighty, glorious and military forces of the Imperium include:

**Imperial Guard** - The Imperial Guard is the backbone of the Imperium's military might. Millions upon millions of well-trained men and women, organised into thousands of regiments, make up the Guard. With Lasgun and bayonet they march upon alien battlefields and garrison vital worlds. They form the Imperium's first line of defence and they strike the first blow in many Crusades. Its Regiments are drawn in great tithes of manpower from the Imperium's worlds and each Regiment has a unique character and fighting tradition, from the rigid discipline of the Armageddon Steel Legion to the stealthy brutality of the pale-skinned Stygians and the unflinching bravery of the Vostroyans. Vast conscript armies, elite special forces, massive tank columns and glorious sabre-wielding cavalry can all be found in the Imperial Guard, often fighting alongside one another on Emperor-forsaken worlds they have never heard of. Regiments do not remain on their homeworlds but are raised explicitly to be sent to fight and die light years away from home. And they do die, for the Imperial Guard bear the weight of the Imperium's wars. It is said that the Emperor knows the name of every soldier that has fallen fighting in His wars—but if that is true, He is the only one who can comprehend just how many Imperial Guardsmen have died in the ten thousand years since the Emperor "ascended" to the Golden Throne. Those who survive the grinding horrors of a lifetime of war are frequently gifted a portion of the very land they fought to conquer as a reward. As with many things in the Imperium, this is a mixed blessing indeed. The Imperial Guard Regiments are raised from the local armies of the Imperium's worlds as part of a planet's tithe to the Imperium. These regiments are normally deployed according to the orders of the Adeptus Terra. However, when the High Lords of Terra declare a major military campaign (often referred to as a "Crusade") they appoint a Warmaster chosen from among high-ranking Imperial Guard officers to command the campaign's regiments. One of the most famous Warmasters, Macharius, was given the title Lord Solar when he became the Imperial Commander of the entire Segmentum Solar. Macharius proved to be the greatest Imperial general since theHorus Heresy when conquered a thousand worlds on the Imperium's Eastern Fringe and expanded the Imperium to the very edge of the Astronomican's reach.**Adeptus Astartes** - The Adeptus Astartes, better known as the Space Marines, are the elite warriors of the Imperium. They are few in number and regarded with almost mythical awe by most folk, for they are inheritors of traditions founded by the Emperor Himself. The Space Marines are divided into Chapters, each possessing 1,000 Space Marines along with its own support staff and spacefleet. It is said that there are around a thousand such Chapters in the Imperium. A Space Marine is recruited in adolescence from among the most violent cultures of the Imperium. His body is hugely enhanced with new genetically-engineered organs promoting muscle and bone growth to give him immense strength, size and resilience. His mind is similarly enhanced; hypno-doctrination and sleep-learning give him both a fervent belief in the Imperium and the knowledge of weapons and tactics to bring the Emperor's wrath to the battlefield. Upon completing his augmentation and training (which not all novices survive), he is issued with his wargear, including a suit ofPower Armour. This armour is one of the most powerful symbols of Imperial might, depicted in statuary and stained-glass windows in cathedrals all across the Imperium. Equipped with nerve-fibre bundles so it moves in sync with his body, a Space Marine's armour not only grants him great strength and protection but is a work of art, resplendent in the heraldry of his Chapter. Each Chapter is independent from the Adeptus Terra. While most will eagerly answer the summons of an Imperial Warmaster or a plea for help from somewhere in the Imperium, some Chapters have their own agendas and cannot be relied upon entirely. All, however, serve the Emperor loyally with complete devotion. All Chapters have proud traditions and distinct characteristics that translate into the way they fight. The ferocious Space Wolves, for instance, are more fiercely independent from the Adeptus Terra than most other Chapters and fight on their own terms up close with Chainswords and Bolt Pistols. The Iron Hands, on the other hand, have close ties to the Adeptus Mechanicus and are the masters of siege warfare, arming their warriors with an array of devastating heavy weapons and tanks. Many Chapters are legends, and names such as the Blood Angels, Ultramarines, Dark Angels and Imperial Fists are spoken of with reverent awe among Imperial citizens. A Space Marine Chapter has its own fleet of fast spacecraft and can react far more quickly to a threat than the Imperial Guard or Imperial Navy, making the Adeptus Astartes one of the only forces in the Imperium that can mount a rapid response to a crisis. The Space Marines are extremely few in number compared to the size of the Imperium and few citizens will ever see one in the flesh, but without them the Imperial military and the human race would slide ever faster towards destruction.**Grey Knights** - The Space Marines of the Grey Knights Chapter are amongst the most highly specialised of the Adeptus Astartes, designed to specifically defend the Imperium against the threat of Chaos. The Grey Knights are permanently attached to the Ordo Malleus as its Chamber Militant and their leaders are rumoured to serve terms as members of the Inner Conclave of the Inquisition. No ordinary warriors, Grey Knights are chosen from amongst the most fearsome and savage feral cultures, each one an emergent psyker who has undergone arduous tests of faith, strength, endurance and courage that would break all but the strongest. Grey Knights fight in baroque, heavily ornamented suits of armour, carrying mighty sigil-encrusted swords and halberds. These warriors alone can stand before the might of a Greater Daemon with any hope of banishing it back to the Warp. The millennia the Grey Knights have spent in battle against the Forces of Chaos has furnished them with blasphemous knowledge, painstakingly pieced together by the Inquisitors of Ordo Malleus. Each warrior carries a copy of the sacred _Liber Daemonica_, the holy battle rites of the Chapter, in a Ceramitecase on his breastplate, and it is this tome which symbolises a Grey Knight's most potent weapon: his unshakable faith in the Divine Emperor of Mankind. For above all else, the Emperor protects...**Deathwatch** - The Space Marines of the Deathwatch are mysterious figures who battle in black Power Armour, fighting with preternatural skill and dedication against the most terrible of alien creatures or xenos, as they are called in the Imperium. They usually appear without warning and vanish as quickly as they arrived, leaving no trace of themselves or of the creatures they have fought. These are the Imperium's most highly trained xenos fighters, known simply as the Deathwatch. Forming the Chamber Militant of the Inquisition'sOrdo Xenos, the Deathwatch uniquely draws its members from across the many different Space MarineChapters, all of which have sworn sacred oaths to maintain specially trained xenos fighters and stand ready to deploy them at a moment's notice when the Inquisition requests their aid. These specialised warriors are drawn together as and when needed by the Ordo to combat alien menaces whenever and wherever it rears its vile head. Rumour has it that Ordo Xenos maintains a number of secret fortresses at the fringes of the Imperium where the Deathwatch keeps a silent and constant vigil, ever watchful for the tell-tale signs of alien encroachment.**Collegia Titanica** - The Collegia Titanica is the division of the Adeptus Mechanicus that includes the Legions composed of Titans, the colossal Imperial robotic war machines that are the most powerful engines of war in the Imperium of Man. The Collegia is also more rarely known as the Adeptus Titanicus (a contraction of "Adeptus Mechanicus Collegia Titanica").**Sisters of Battle **(Orders Militant of the** Adepta Sororitas**) - TheAdepta Sororitas, also known as the Sisters of Battle, are an all-female division of the Imperial Cult's ecclesiastical organisation known as the Ecclesiarchyor, more formally, as the Adeptus Ministorum. The Sisterhood's Orders Militant serve as the Ecclesiarchy's fighting arm, mercilessly rooting out corruption and heresy within humanity and every organisation of theAdeptus Terra. There is naturally some overlap between the duties of the Sisterhood and the ImperialInquisition; for this reason, although the Inquisition and the Sisterhood remain entirely separate organisations, the Orders Militant of the Sisterhood also act as the Chamber Militant of the Inquisition's Ordo Hereticus. The Adepta Sororitas and the Sisters of Battle are commonly regarded as the same organisation, but the latter title technically refers only to the Orders Militant of the Adepta Sororitas, the best-known part of the Adepta. The Sisterhood serves as the Ministorum's only official military force because the Decree Passive laid down by the reformist Ecclesiarch Sebastian Thor held that in the wake of the Age of Apostasy of the 36th Millennium, the Ecclesiarchy cannot maintain any _men under arms_. This was supposed to limit the power of the Ecclesiarchy. However, the Ministorum were able to circumvent this decree by using the all-female force of the Sisterhood.**Imperial Navy** - The Imperial Navy holds nearly all of the Imperium's fighting vessels; local governments, Warmasters and others are forbidden to maintain their own fleets of warships. Their spacecraft include some of the most potent engines of destruction in the whole galaxy, including mighty battleships thousands of years old. The Navy's ships range from small escorts with a crew of a few dozen to the immense _Emperor_-class Battleships which might have 20,000 souls or more on board. The Navy also includes fighter and bomber crews and aircraft that support the Imperial Guard on the ground. The Navy's officer class is highly traditional and aristocratic in character. The Imperium's noble families frequently boast naval officers among their number and naval dynasties dominate many battlefleets. Elitism is a virtue on most ships, where the officers' lives are in stark contrast to those of the ratings and engine crews. With thousands of crew living and dying on ships that can spend decades without seeing port, a ship of the Imperial Navy becomes a city in space. Mutinies are not unknown and the Naval security battalions of Armsmen are a familiar sight on the decks of all naval ships, their black visors and shotguns constantly reminding the men that obedience is their duty to the Emperor. The Navy relies on many other organisations to function. Perhaps most importantly, these ancient and complex ships could not function without a complement of Tech-Priests who know how to appease the starships'Machine Spirits and maintain technology that is too old and mysterious to be replicated. The Navy is also reliant on the Tech-Priests of Mars for refits, upgrades, repairs and new starships. It is usual for a warship to have Astropaths on board, for proper communication is essential if the Imperium is to be defended. Many captains are glad to have Ministorum clergy among their crew, ministering to the spiritual needs of the men and steeling their spirits with sermons. Commissars are appointed to the larger ships, watching over the moral fibre of the crew and providing a watch against mutiny and impiety. Then, of course, there is the Navigator of each vessel, whose family can occupy entire spires jutting out into space atop the ship.**Skitarii**, the **Legio Cybernetica** and squads of **Combat Servitors** - These are three types of autonomous military ground forces deployed the Adeptus Mechanicus to protect their Forge Worlds and to assist Imperial military campaigns when necessary.**Inquisitorial Storm Troopers** - The Inquisition maintains its own own corps of highly-trained special operations forces who are similar to the Imperial Guard's elite Storm Troopers that guard the secret installations of the Inquisition across the galaxy. The Inquisition maintains a number of fortresses throughout the galaxy, both secret and known to the inhabitants of the Imperium. Inquisitorial Storm Troopers are used by the Imperial Inquisition to guard their fortresses and the Black Ships as they make their purity runs across the Imperium's sectors, and they also augment an individual Inquisitor's personal forces with reliable and effective soldiers. Many Storm Troopers of particular skill are chosen to become an Inquisitor's Throne Agents. Inquisitorial Storm Troopers are selected from families with a record of unwavering faith in the Emperor and prior duty to the Inquisition, usually from the Schola Progenium. They are trained and equipped in a manner similar to Imperial Guard Storm Troopers, albeit lacking the rapid insertion and infiltration skills, as they are not expected to undertake such types of missions which are more often carried out for the Inquisition by theOfficio Assassinorum. 


	8. Chapter 8

Imperial Faith

Imperial Cult

Deity:God-Emperor of MankindObject of Worship:Golden Throne, Imperial icons and relicsSacred Worlds:Terra and Ophelia VIIGovernor:EcclesiarchClergy:Adeptus MinistorumEstablishment:

Pre-Horus Heresy (As the _Lectitio Divinitatus_) / 32nd Millennium (As Imperial state religion)

The **Imperial Cult** is the official and only state religion of theImperium of Man. It is devoted to the worship of the God-Emperor of Mankind as the ascended divinity and saviour ofhumanity. Those who believe in the Cult's teachings hold that the Emperor is a living spiritual entity and the only true divinity of humanity. The Imperial Cult is lead by the Adeptus Ministorum, also known as the Ecclesiarchy, who devote their lives to spreading the Word of the Emperor and doing His will. Almost all variants on the Imperial Cult are tolerated by the Ecclesiarchy's priests, but all worship of the Emperor must comply with certain Imperial values including, but not limited to: unquestioning political loyalty to the High Lords of Terra and the various agencies of the Adeptus Terra, diligence in carrying out the Emperor's will, belief in the Emperor's ultimate divinity, and conscious contributions to the Imperium's overall well-being, even if this means nothing more than helping to improve one's own homeworld or even just home city or town.

In the 41st Millennium the Imperial Cult has almost unrivaled power and influence within the Imperium. Heresy against it is punished severely. The religion is formally administered by the clerics of the Ecclesiarchy. The Imperial Cult is the Imperium's state religion, and in many ways the religion is the state itself since it is the glue that binds humanity together in the service of the Emperor and the Imperium. The precepts of the Imperial Cult, called the** Imperial Creed**, include the belief that all of humanity must be brought into the Imperium whereever in the galaxy humans live, the absolute abhorrence of aliens as dangers to humanity's rightful domination of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the realisation that the existence of unsanctioned psychic powers and human mutation is a dire threat to the human species which must be controlled. All of these precepts have their origins in what the Emperor himself preached during the Great Crusade of the 31st Millennium, though they ignore the Emperor's most fundamental teaching that he was not divine and that human beings should give up superstition and the trappings of organised religion in favour of scientific rationalism. Yet, because of the existence of Chaos and the true, psychic nature of the Immaterium, the Imperial Cult has ironically proven to be a powerful source of protection for humanity from the dangers presented by the Ruinous Powers.

While the ordinary citizen of the Imperium believes that the Emperor has always been venerated as the immortal and omnipotent God of humanity throughout the history of Mankind, Imperial historians and the Battle-Brothers of the Space Marine Chapters know that this was not always the case. At the beginning of the Emperor's Great Crusade in the 31st Millennium, the Imperium of Man functioned very differently. Firstly, there was no Ecclesiarchy and the veneration of the Emperor, in the form of a cult known as the Lectitio Divinitatus, was frowned upon and outright condemned by the Emperor himself. The official Imperial doctrine, known as the Imperial Truth, was that the Emperor was an extremely powerful being, the rightful ruler of all Mankind, and the perfect physical, mental and spiritual embodiment of humanity, but no matter how supreme, he was still only a human being. During the Great Crusade, however, many ordinary Imperial citizens found that the light of reason and truth brought by the Emperor was not enough to fulfill their basic human psychological desires or provide protection from the real supernatural threats that existed in the universe, and so they took to worshiping him as a deity to fulfill their spiritual needs.

During the Great Crusade, many different religious cults appeared throughout the Imperium worshiping the Emperor of Mankind as a God, each with their own subtle variations and differences. These forms of worship appeared first in those primitive planets that had regressed technologically during the Age of Strife. The numbers of these cults multiplied immensely with the Emperor's ultimate sacrifice to save Mankind from the Warmaster Horus during theHorus Heresy and his subsequent incarceration upon the Golden Throne, which was hailed as the Emperor's "ascension" back to full divinity. Most of these cults would gradually fade away, while others prospered, eventually absorbing the weaker ones. The more successful Emperor-worship cults spread their forms of worship to other planets.

The strongest of all the early Imperial cults was the Temple of the Saviour Emperor. This cult had the advantage over the others in that it was based on Terra and that its leader had been a successful and respected officer of theImperial Guard who had fought at the Battle of Terra, defending the heart of the Imperium. This leader had re-named himself Fatidicus and had begun to preach his teachings concerning the divinity of the Emperor to anyone who would listen. This faith spread among the members of the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy, but also to lowly scribes and minor adepts of the Adeptus Terra (the Administratum). The faith was then spread by these individuals to other planets. When Fatidicus died at the age of 120 standard Terran years, the Temple had more than a billion followers on Terra and untold faithful throughout the Imperium's Segmentum Solar.

In the wake of the chaos and anarchy of the Horus Heresy, the Temple of the Saviour Emperor provided a message of hope and reunification through a common faith. Cults who rejected being absorbed, or who couldn't be absorbed, saw themselves being persecuted by fanatical mobs who preferred the Saviour Emperor theology. Officially, the Temple rejected this violence performed in its name. This development culminated in the 32nd Millennium, by which time almost two-thirds of the Imperium's population followed the teachings of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor, the exceptions being the Space Marines, who have never formally acknowledged the divinity of the Emperor and theAdeptus Mechanicus, who had their own form of worship in the Cult of the Machine. The Temple's importance, influence, and power rapidly outmatched any other Imperial cult dedicated to Emperor-worship.

The Emperor became an object of general religious veneration across the Imperium following the Horus Heresy and his internment within the Golden Throne on Terra. Over the decades after that conflict many individual Imperial cults sprang up throughout the Imperium, with their central theme being the redemption of humanity through the Emperor's self-sacrifice. After a few hundred years, a single cult known as the Ecclesiarchy was formed from the unification of a number of smaller cults with the Temple of the Saviour Emperor, which gradually absorbed the main body of diverse believers in the Emperor's divinity. In the 32nd Millennium this cult was recognized as the official state religion of the Imperium, was granted the official governmental title of the Adeptus Ministorum and was incorporated into the Adeptus Terra once the High Lords realized how useful the religion could be in protecting, unifying and energising the citizens of the Imperium from the myriad dangers of the galaxy. Remaining religious cults which differed in their primary theology from the Imperial Creed taught by the Ecclesiarchy were persecuted and mostly destroyed.

A few centuries later Ecclesiarch Veneris II received a seat amongst the High Lords of Terra, and after 300 years, this seat was made permanent. The political power of the Ecclesiarchy continued to grow, increasing its hold over the minds and beliefs of the Imperial citizenry. Those who wouldn't follow its teachings were declared unbelievers and heretics, ostracized, and on occasion even executed. The vast territories of the Imperium were organized into dioceses led by the Ecclesiarchy's Cardinals. These powerful religious and political figures were responsible for Missionaries and Preachers on hundreds of worlds. Lavish shrines, impressive temples, and majestic cathedrals dedicated to the God-Emperor of Mankind were built throughout the Imperium. Millions of religious pilgrims soon began making their way across the galaxy to visit particularly important religious locations, such as the world where a particular Imperial Saint had performed their most famous miracle. In time, the sheer number of pilgrims who arrived on certain worlds became an economic activity in itself and entire planets were dedicated to worship and directly ruled by the Adeptus Ministorum as shrine worlds. Particularly important shrine worlds might become the religious seat of an entire diocese and so a Cardinal would take up residence there. These planets became known as Cardinal worlds.

The only threat to the Ecclesiarchy was the Confederation of Light. Based upon the planet Dimmamar, this penitent faith's ideals of poverty and humble living clearly contradicted the teachings of the Ecclesiarchy, whose view was that sacrifices of wealth and money to the Adeptus Ministorum in taxes, tithes and other gifts were necessary to enhance the citizens of the Imperium's access to salvation and ensure that the Emperor's light reached every corner of the galaxy through his Missions. The Confederation proved too difficult for Ministorum agents to infiltrate, and the Ecclesiarchy turned to violence, supported in this effort by the unanimous vote of the Senate of the High Lords of Terra, who declared the onset of the first War of Faith, largely to ensure that Imperial stability was not damaged by the emergence of religious plurality. The entire Confederation was declared heretical and the forces of the Imperial Guard, the Imperial Navy, and thousands of fanatical zealots from the Frateris Militia were unleashed upon it, bent on its destruction. Only a few cells and hidden shrines of the Confederation managed to survive and the power of the Ecclesiarchy over the minds of men, for better or worse, was made unassailable. By the end of the 33rd Millennium every Imperial world was furnished with its own cathedral and the coffers of the Ecclesiarchy were filled with the offerings and tithes from the teeming billions of the God-Emperor's faithful. This wealth was squandered in building more and more larger and lavish churches and cathedrals and to fund Wars of Faith intended not to save the souls of humanity but to secure the Ecclesiarchy's political power and wealth.

The Age of Apostasy in the 36th Millennium was one of the most destabilizing events in Imperial history after the Horus Heresy, beginning during the long struggle between the Ecclesiarchy and the Administratum for power over the Imperium. High Lord Goge Vandire, the 361st Master of the Administratum, was a power-hungry tyrant who eventually gained direct control over the Ecclesiarchy as well as the Administratum by usurping the position of theEcclesiarch. This made him the most powerful individual in the Imperium, and allowed him to place his own rule above even that of the Emperor. His time in power became known as the Reign of Blood, consisting of massive purges of the Ecclesiarchy, and the killings and assassinations of countless perceived traitors and conspirators. This period was eventually ended by the Ecclesiarch Sebastian Thor's new Confederation of Light, a sect of the Imperial Cult that sought to end Goge Vandire's corruption of Imperial theology. The Apostasy ultimately resulted in a major reformation of the Ecclesiarchy, the creation of the Imperial Inquisition's Ordo Hereticus to police those enemies of the Imperium who lay within its own structures and the creation of the Adepta Sororitas to serve as both the Eccelsiarchy's new military forces and the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Hereticus.

mperial Creed

The tenets of the Imperial Cult, known as the Imperial Creed, are actually highly flexible and are tailored by the Adeptus Ministorum's Missionaries to fit the native culture, existing religion, and cultural practices of whatever world it exists upon. As such, Imperial Cult practices adhered to on one world within the Imperium may be held as abhorrent on another. The Adeptus Ministorum tolerates this vast range of practices and beliefs as it would be impossible to maintain the faith by a rigid adherence to a standardised orthodoxy. However, the Ecclesiarchy does enforce several basic tenets of the Imperial Creed, deviation from which is considered heresy. These tenets include the following beliefs:

That the God-Emperor of Mankind once walked among men in their form and that He is and always has been the one, true God of humanity.That the God-Emperor of Mankind is the one true God of Mankind, regardless of the previous beliefs held by any man or woman.It is the duty of the faithful to purge the Heretic, beware the psyker and mutant, and abhor the alien.Every human being has a place within the God-Emperor's divine order.It is the duty of the faithful to unquestionably obey the authority of the Imperial government and their superiors, who speak in the Emperor's name.

Another recurring theme of the Imperial faith is the notion of the End Times, which gained particular momentum in the Imperial Cult towards the end of the 41st Millennium. Often tied to the notion of the End Times is the belief that the Emperor will rise from the Golden Throne and complete the work be began ten thousand Terran years ago, and deliver the faithful from all the evils of the galaxy. While most view the End Times as a time of deliverance and spiritual salvation, it is also believed by many within the Ecclesiarchy that the God-Emperor will sit in judgement of all Mankind, and those who lack faith in Him will be damned for all eternity.

Aside from these central tenets of the Imperial Creed, there exists a great body of both sanctioned and unsanctioned additional dogma which varies from sector to sector and world to world and is the subject of constant debate within the Ministorum's hierarchy. The subject and nature of the afterlife is one such regularly debated topic, with many teachings mentioning the form of an afterlife in which the faithful take their place beside the Emperor of Mankind for eternity. However, other elements of the Holy Synod maintain a different version of the afterlife, and the nature of the belief in an afterlife varies greatly depending on the culture and technological sophistication of a given Imperial planet.

Cult Mechanicus

Deity:Machine God  
(aka _Deus Mechanicus_,_Omnissiah_)Objects of Worship:Machines Imbued with aMachine SpiritSacred World:MarsGovernor:Fabricator-General of MarsClergy:Tech-priestsEstablishment:Age of Strife (ca.25th - 30th Millennium)

The **Cult Mechanicus**, also known in ancient times before the Horus Heresy as the **Cult Mechanicum**, is the set of religious beliefs that serves as the philosophical foundation of theAdeptus Mechanicus. Although the worshippers of the Cult Mechanicus are members of the Imperium, they have their own version of worship that differs substantially in theology and ritualistic forms from the standard state religion known as theImperial Cult that is dedicated to the God-Emperor of Mankind. The religion of the Cult Mechanicus values knowledge and the technology it creates above all else and views the final embrace of technology in the form of a purely mechanical existence as the ultimate destiny for Mankind's evolution.

Theology

The Cult Mechanicus believes knowledge itself to be the manifestation of divinity in the universe. The supreme object of devotion is therefore the omniscient Machine God, an immanent and omnipotent spirit that governs all technology, machinery and knowledge in Creation. The Machine God is believed to be friendly to humanity, and to be the originator of all human technological and scientific knowledge. According to the teachings of the Cult Mechanicus, knowledge is the supreme manifestation of divinity, and all creatures and artefacts that embody knowledge are sacred because of it. Machines that preserve knowledge from ancient times are also holy, and machine intelligences are no less divine than those of flesh and blood-perhaps more so, because they are more pure expressions of that knowledge without the conflicting emotions and imperfections that riddle organic beings like Man. A person's worth is only the sum of his or her knowledge - the physical body is simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect, and one that is far more imperfect in the Machine God's eyes than one of metal and circuits. For this reason, the devotees of the Cult Mechanicus often transform large portions of their bodies with cybernetic enhancements.

The Machine God

According to the Cult Mechanicus, technology is a higher form of life than that created by cruder physical processes such as biological evolution. Only a divine source could have inspired the perfection of form and function attainable in machines. This divine source is the Machine God. The Machine God is not to be understood in the sense of the ancient Terran Abrahamic religious tradition's personal God; the Machine God is not a person, but rather a force immanent in the universe. For unspecified reasons, it has appointed humans as its chosen people, and reveals its true designs and machines to them through select prophets. In order to interact with the physical world it was also prophesied to create a physical avatar, called the **Omnissiah**. In the early days of the Great Crusade, the Emperor of Mankind was recognized by the Mechanicus as the Omnissiah, prompting the signing of the Treaty of Mars(known to the Mechanicus as the Treaty of Olympus) and the alliance of the Cult Mechanicus with the burgeoningImperium of Man, transforming the Tech-priests of Mars into the Adeptus Terra's Adeptus Mechanicus.

Machine Spirits

The Cult also believes in the existence of Machine Spirits, minute, animistic fragments of the Machine God that inhabit every machine or piece of technology in existence. These fragments of their deity naturally command a great deal of respect, and they are also believed to be directly in control of the machine's operation. This means that Mechanicus tech-priests and others they instruct generally make many ritualized, prayer-like petitions to their machinery in order to insure their spirits are compliant and respected, and thus that they operate properly. These rituals often include many operations of a potentially mechanically-useful nature, such as lubricating an axle, securing a screw or similar actions, but also operations of no immediately visible value such as sacrifices, chants, libations and the like.

The belief in Machine Spirits is also the cause of the Cult's stance on alien technology. As aliens do not recognise the spirits of their machines, such devices are enslaved and maltreated by their creators. Because of this, humans should not make use of xenos technology even if it is superior to its human-made counterparts. Orthodox Mechanicus Cultists usually advocate the destruction of alien technology to free its spirit, while more radical followers may excuse the study, safekeeping and even use of alien devices in the name of the eternal Quest for Knowledge.

Quest for Knowledge

The ultimate goal of the Cult Mechanicus is to understand the Omnissiah. The communal and individual attempt of Mechanicus believers at this is known as the Quest for Knowledge, and the Cult's followers view this endeavour as paramount and more important than any other concern. Generally, the Quest is pursued through scientific and exploratory endeavours. The Cult believes that all knowledge already exists, and it is primarily a matter of time before it can be gathered together to complete the Quest. The Mechanicus' members are therefore disinclined to perform much original research, and they consider it more important to safeguard that knowledge which they already have accrued and gather more by searching for STC templates and similar lost pieces of ancient human technology from the Dark Age of Technology. Some original research does happen within the Adeptus Mechanicus, although the results of such endeavours are strictly quarantined for many years before being disseminated publicly.

In the Quest for Knowledge, members are guided by the Sixteen Universal Laws. The Sixteen Laws, or "lores" are as follows:

The Mysteries**01. Life is directed motion.****02. The spirit is the spark of life.****03. Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.****04. Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.****05. Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.****06. Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.****07. Comprehension is the key to all things.****08. The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.**The Warnings**09. The alien mechanism is a perversion of the True Path.****10. The soul is the conscience of sentience.****11. A soul can be bestowed only by the Omnissiah.****12. The Soulless sentience (i.e. the Necrons) is the enemy of all life.****13. The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question.****14. The Machine Spirit guards the knowledge of the Ancients.****15. Flesh is fallible, but ritual honours the Machine Spirit.****16. To break with ritual is to break with faith.**


	9. Chapter 9

The Imperial Demesne

The territory of the Imperium is defined by the reach of the psychic beacon of the Astronomican, which has a range of approximately 50,000 light years. The Imperium proper could thus be thought of as a sphere whose center lies at Terra's Sol System, and whose radius is about 50,000 light years wide. However, as a practical matter, agents and agencies of the Imperium (along with "unofficial" representatives of the Imperium - such as Rogue Traders - who often work in tandem with the goals of the Imperium) carry on its affairs and expand its influence beyond that limit. The disparate and widespread nature of Imperial territory, with its millions of star systems and worlds, means that a strongly centralised government would be unfeasible.

The Imperium encompasses countless worlds. No one has ever been able to map them and no one can even say how many there are. Entire departments of the Adeptus Administratum are devoted to cataloguing the worlds in the Emperor's domains, a never-ending task, for it is in a state of eternal flux. Furthermore, the Adeptus Terra holds that the whole human race and the entire galaxy are under the Emperor's rule—the Imperium has a manifest destiny to unite Mankind, impose its laws on every human world and destroy all alien life. The true scope of the Imperium is, therefore, the entire galaxy, though this is far from actuality. The Imperium jealously guards its territory whenever it can but its sheer size means that it cannot react to every circumstance. Many planets live and die alone, with only the truly great threats commanding the attention of the Adeptus Terra. Worlds are frequently lost to aliens, rebellion or disasters, with news of their destruction sometimes taking centuries to reach Terra. The Imperium's borders undergo constant change, with new worlds discovered, conquered or colonised and old ones lost to xenos attack,Exterminatus or even to the Warp.

The Imperium of Man divides the galaxy into five administrative zones called Segmentae Majoris, which include the:

Segmentum Solar, the galactic "center," with the Sol System at its heart.Segmentum Pacificus, the galactic "west."Segmentum Obscurus, a region to the galactic "east" of Terra that has been heavily fortified by the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Guard due to the dangers posed by this Segmentum's most infamous element, the Eye of Terror. This is a vast Warp rift where the Immaterium actually intrudes upon material space - as do the Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legions and the daemons of the Ruinous Powers themselves.Segmentum Tempestus, the galactic "south."Segmentum Ultima, the largest province of all in the Imperium, located to the galactic "north" of Terra; its furthest extents are beyond even the range of the Astronomican in space still unexplored by humanity.

The Segmentae are the primary administrative divisions of the Imperium. Each is divided into sectors, which are areas of three-dimensional space. The sectors in turn consist of sub-sectors, each containing a number of individual star systems. These spatial divisions and subdivisions are also levels of the administrative hierarchy.

Each Segmentum Governor (or Segmentum Commander, the term used when the governor is acting in his military capacity) oversees his Sector Governors (or Sector Commanders), who in turn oversee Sub-sector Governors (or Sub-sector Commanders), who in their turn oversee the individual Planetary Governors, who are also known as Imperial Commanders. The higher ranks in this administrative system are usually combined with a basic planetary governorship as well as interstellar duties. Each of these governors is usually a member of the Imperial nobility and it is rare, but not impossible, for a man or woman born in the lowest ranks of Imperial society to rise to the rank of an Imperial Governor on his or her own merits or abilities. This neo-feudal system is the means by which the Imperium maintains control of the separate planets that comprise it.

Planetary Administration

Because of the distances involved and the unstable nature of Warp communication, Planetary Governors generally operate very autonomously. This allows quite a lot of variation in the regional governments of the Imperium. Some governorships are hereditary, but it is also possible for a planet to have an elected Planetary Governor, a tyrant Governor who rules solely by force of his personal arms, or anything in between. So long as the Governor fulfills his duties to the broader Imperium, his rule will generally be accepted by the higher authorities with little or no interference.

A rare few Planetary Governors preside over Feral or Feudal Worlds where the Imperium has not, for whatever reason, seen fit to introduce modern technology. These Governors are often isolated from their subjects, sometimes even living on orbital installations, only interfering to control mutation, Chaos incursions, Ork invasions and rogue psykers, as well as to collect the modest tithes in men for the Imperial Guard and psykers that these planets provide. The Imperial duties of a Planetary Governor include paying the planetary tithe to the Administratum, controlling psykers, mutation and heresy among the population, defending the planet and putting down rebellions against the local government (and thus against the Imperium). A serious responsibility for a Planetary Governor is the maintenance of an adequate planetary defence force capable of defending the planet in the event of an invasion. The Planetary Defence Forces (PDF) are expected to defeat attacks from minor foes, and in the case of major invasions to hold out until reinforcements arrive, which could take a period of months, years or even decades.

A relatively small number of Imperial worlds are not ruled by a Planetary Governor, but are directly overseen by an alternate organisation such as the Adeptus Terra, the Ecclesiarchy, an Imperial Commander of the Imperial Guard or a Chapter of the Space Marines. These planets include the Forge Worlds of the Adeptus Mechanicus, whose inhabitants toil without pause to manufacture the weapons of the Emperor's armies (including Mars, Gryphonne IVand Fortis Binary), the Cardinal Worlds of the Ecclesiarchy, which are given entirely over to education of the priesthood and worship of the Emperor (Ignatius Cardinal, Ophelia VII), and the Space Marine Chapter homeworlds, such as Fenris, Macragge, Baal, or Medusa.

Just as the environments and cultures of Imperial worlds vary immensely, so too does the way they are governed. The Imperium allows most of its worlds to govern themselves, using whatever method of government the population gravitates towards or was the traditional form of rule. Some are hereditary monarchies, others are ruled by aristocracies or warlords. Some are ruled by elected parliaments, while on others power is given to whoever can pay for it. On some worlds these are the same thing. Upon other planets, such things as democracy, free choice and even individual civil rights are present, though these worlds are few and far between. Some worlds are administered directly by the various Adepta, such as Agri-worlds run by the Administratum or Cardinal Worlds ruled by theEcclesiarchy. Whilst the individual countries, states, tribes, corporations, hegemonies, peoples' work collectives, and so on, may have their own various leaders, the Adeptus Terra will look to one person to fulfil the planet's Imperial tithes and obligations to the Imperium. Titles for this governor vary from planet to planet. In some cases the person judged responsible for the Imperial tithe may not even be aware that this is the case until too late. Certainly, more than one titular head of state has discovered this upon rejoining the Imperium after a period of isolation through Warp Storm, war or other calamity.

All Imperial Governors are expected to recognise the authority of the Imperium and the Emperor and to uphold His laws. These responsibilities include aiding the agents of the Adeptus Arbites and the Inquisition, as well as arranging the allotted tithes for the Administratum. Governors are also expected to yield psykers up to the Black Ships of the Inquisition when required and to keep the population free of mutants, Chaos Cultists, heretics, political radicals and witches. In practice, some planets escape from these duties with relative ease, whilst others are placed under seemingly tyrannical restrictions. Due to the sheer size of the Imperium and the unpredictability of travel through the Warp, there are many occasions where the Administratum never manages to extract its levy, or theBlack Ships never arrive at the appointed time to take psychic individuals away. Planets can be isolated for generations and it is not unusual to encounter worlds where the Imperial tithe has been all but forgotten. Certainly the scribes of the Prol System have, in their vast libraries, several accounts of Administratum Logisters arriving at worlds lost for centuries, only to discover their yearly tithe burning on vast pyres as the natives offer their dues up to the sky.

In some cases, a group of planets might have enough contact with one another to form political alliances and even minor interstellar empires. Other clusters of worlds might be connected by huge corporations, the powers of hereditary nobles, religious leaders or other such ties. In such cases, Planetary Governors must not only tend to the needs of the Imperium but also the whims of these power blocs.

Human Variability

The peoples of the Imperium vary in their form and appearances just as their homeworlds do. Whilst there is a generally agreed baseline human standard, consisting of four limbs, one head, twenty digits and so on, the local environment and genetic stock have caused all manner of interesting anomalies, evolutionary adaptations and fashions. These differences are usually cosmetic in effect; however, the more radical alterations walk the line between accepted variation and outright mutation. It is a subject of intense debate amongst some Inquisitors, and indeed the priests of the Ecclesiarchy, on what it is to be human and therefore accepted into the Imperium.

Certain planets will betray their colonial origins with the appearance of their peoples—perhaps a particular type of nose or skin colour will be dominant. Others will have clear tribal divisions. Some populations will possess unusual adaptations as a consequence of their local environment. The folk of the Agri-world Dreah, for example, have a grey skin, hair and eye tone, which exactly matches the flora, fauna, sky and waters of their notoriously dull planet. Some cultures may impose certain ideals of beauty that drastically alter the looks of their peoples. Certainly, many strange and terrible gangs of Underhivers have been discovered, clad in hyper-fashionable armour, sporting glowing electoos, skull studs, gang tribal mutilations and shiv scars with pride.

To some extent a similar appearance and culture binds the people of a planet together into a common stock. Usually speaking, citizens of the Imperium will prefer to spend their time with fellow natives of their world. That said, however, Mankind has ever been titillated by the exotic, so friendship, love affairs and even children with off-worlders is not unknown on planets with a culture that legitimises such travel.

Rebellion

The Imperial Creed maintains that all of humanity must be brought and kept within the Imperium where men and women can benefit from the rule of the Emperor. Several Imperial organizations are permanently occupied with suppressing any possibility of rebellion before it has a chance of developing. The common worship of the God-Emperor holds mankind together and instills loyalty towards the Imperium. Rebellions and uprisings on Imperial planets nonetheless remain a constant problem. The nature and causes of a rebellion can fall into several categories: the government of an Imperial world may decide to secede from the Imperium; a popular uprising may attempt to overthrow the local Imperial government; in the most insidious of cases the rebellion may be brought about by alien or Chaos influence. In the more prosaic cases however, a government established through rebellion is not necessarily opposed by the Imperium, so long as it accedes fully to Imperial authority and pays its tithes to Terra. Besides the pursuit of outright war, there are many ways a rebellious world may be brought back into the Imperium. With the existence of its more secretive organs like the Inquisition, the Imperium is fully capable of carrying out covert methods of restoring Imperial rule, including assassination, popular agitation, economic sabotage and terrorism. Sometimes a rebellion can be subdued by the removal of a single individual. Pro-Imperial groups or other anti-government forces can be infiltrated or supported as required.

Imperial Languages

Low Gothic is the common tongue of the Imperium, spoken on most Imperial planets as a first or second language. Imperial worlds have inevitably developed their own, often highly variant, dialects of Low Gothic over time. High Gothic (represented as a form of Latinised English) dates from the last time humanity was united across interstellar distances in an ancient confederation that existed during the Dark Age of Technology (long before the Age of the Imperium), and is used solely as a hieratic tongue by the divisions of the Adeptus Terra, the Inquisition and theEcclesiarchy. Low Gothic (also called Imperial Gothic or simply Gothic) is the "official" language of the Imperium, the everyday tongue of its Adepts and of Terra. Most worlds have been a part of the Imperium for long enough to have adopted Low Gothic as a universal tongue but there are still a great many Feral Worlds on which Imperial Gothic is not spoken. Inevitably, dialects of Gothic differ from world to world and can be mutually unintelligible. Older planets frequently maintain archaic tongues of their own, to the extent that ruling aristocracies might only know enough Low Gothic to be sworn into their Imperial offices. For highly formal matters, the Adeptus Terra use High Gothic, the precursor language of Imperial Gothic. Many Ecclesiarchy rituals, Administratum edicts and Imperial charters use this ancient and venerable language.

Psykers in the Imperium

Humans with psychic powers, known colloquially as psykers, who possess abilities ranging from telepathy to pyrokenesis, have existed since the dawn of Mankind's existence as a species during the Paleolithic Age on Old Earth, but their position in the Imperium is an uncomfortable one at best. An untrained psyker is an unguarded gateway to the Warp, through which psychic predators like daemons and Enslavers can enter realspace and wreak havoc. It is said that whole worlds have been lost to hideous monsters of the Empyrean, while rogue psykers have committed horrible crimes with their powers or led dangerous and destructive cults. On some worlds all psykers are tried as "witches," subjected to tortuous ordeals and burned at the stake when their inevitable guilt is proven. Imperial law requires all worlds to monitor its psykers and subject them for testing by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. Those who are strong enough to withstand the perils of the Warp are forced to endure the soul-binding and are trained to serve the Imperium as Sanctioned Psykers. Those who are too weak are taken away by the Black Ships and never seen again, their lives used to maintain the Emperor's strength within the Warp.

Travel in the Imperium

Interstellar travel between the worlds of the Imperium is rare and dangerous. The vast majority of civilians will never know the roaring tedium of shuttle flight, the sickening plummet of a Drop Pod or the unnerving silence of deep space. Given the huge size of the Imperium, it is impossible to cross it in the fleeting span of time given to ordinary men. Colonists, pilgrims and refugees spend many generations in the vastness of space, and many starships never survive the vagaries of travel to reach their destination.

Sub-Light Travel

Used mostly for journeys between planets or closely neighbouring star systems, sub-light travel involves speeds that confound mortal imagination and yet are still nothing when measured against the sheer size of the galaxy. Those attempting to use slower than light drives to travel any appreciable distance condemn themselves and their descendants to a shipboard life, endlessly whittling away the years until they arrive at the distant star they set out to reach. The average Imperial citizen is unlikely to experience slower than light space travel. Even those individuals living within a system with plentiful ships for interplanetary travel are likely to prefer the world of their birth over distant places with strange customs, odd food and "funny-looking" people. In many places, space travel is reserved for the privileged few who can afford to maintain the rituals, priests and shrines that such craft require, as well as the vast cost of the starships themselves. Tech-Priests do what they can to sate the Machine Spirits of these spacecraft, but often even their unfathomable lore is not enough to prevent these temperamental ships from venting their rage (and oxygen) to the detriment of passengers. Sheer odds dictate that sooner or later those that frequently travel in ships between planets will experience such a disaster. Those worlds that have not lost the art of creating and maintaining slower than light starships jealously guard their arcane craft. This reluctance to share their guild secrets ensures the reliability and price of their vessels but also robs others of vital information required to placate their own craft. Institutions such as the Imperial Navy, the Inquisition and various Adepta have access to much better-quality vessels, maintained with religious awe and reverence by countless generations of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Warp Travel

To move any appreciable distance within the Imperium, voyagers must make use of Warp travel. This method of faster than light travel is rare, expensive and dangerous, as it requires the use of the unpredictable realm known as the Warp, or the Immaterium. Vessels equipped with a functional Warp-Drive are able to translate themselves into this other dimension of being by generating an envelope of protective Gellar Fields. The Warp-Drive "bends" the starship through the veil of realspace into the Immaterium. Once within this strange hyperdimensional realm, the starship is able to ride the currents and eddies that flow within the Warp, frequently dropping back into realspace to check its positioning.

The Immaterium is a bizarre and contradictory place, entirely unnatural to Mankind or any being of realspace. Looking upon the Warp unprotected causes madness and Chaotic corruption, and thus is greatly feared by almost everyone in the Imperium. Dimensions, colours, forces and emotions operate entirely differently within the Warp's embrace, and this can drive even the most thick-headed crewman insane. Psykers of course, find such travel even more disturbing as their mystical senses are able to comprehend much more of the Immaterium and the foul creatures that dwell within it. Those that travel through the Warp emerge to discover another of its disconcerting effects. Time does not operate normally within this other realm and so travellers can emerge to discover that centuries have passed in realspace since they started their journey, that they have merely been absent for a few seconds, or have even arrived before they left. Even skilled Navigators cannot predict how much time will be lost, gained or repeated over the course of a journey. Those that embark upon Warp travel know that they will probably never return home, or that if they do so they will find it so changed that it is unrecognisable. When two or more captains of starships meet, they invariably trade dates, attempting to reconstruct the time they are missing or have gained. Needless to say, Warp travel is not embarked upon lightly.

The Warp is occasionally prone to great turbulence or storms of activity. These strike at random and last for an unpredictable amount of time. Whilst these Warp Storms rage, any vessels within are tossed about on roiling currents, sometimes being spat out at random locations. Other ships simply become trapped, unable to translate back into realspace, cursed to an eternity upon the waves of the Warp. These storms disrupt communication across the Imperium and can sometimes herald a great disaster within realspace, as they did during the Age of Strife before the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh during the Fall of the Eldar.

Imperial Communications

Just as travel within the Imperium is a complicated and inexact science, so too is the business of exchanging messages between the many and varied planets that make up the Imperium. Planetary communications systems such as vox-casters, hardwired telegraph and telephony lines and the more advanced vox-communicators suffice to pass messages amongst the nations of a world, yet have almost no use beyond the bounds of the planet's surface. Such devices require many Terran years for their signal to reach even the nearest planet of a star system and have no surety of even being detected when they arrive. The perils of travel ensure that human or Servitor messengers are just as unreliable and potentially as slow as radio or other energy wave communications.

The Imperium is forced to rely upon communication by psychic, or astropathic means. Astropaths communicate with symbols and iconic images, projecting these messages through vast distances of space by means of psychic power drawn from the Warp. This process is usually exhausting and requires ritual and focus in order to keep thepsyker in the right frame of mind. These can take a wide variety of forms, such as use of the Emperor's Tarot, vision quests, automatic writing, trances, séances and the like. The Gaolist Astropaths of Hredin for example, spend many years etching their messages onto painstakingly illuminated sheets of iron and then destroy the work of art upon a massive grinding wheel when they are ready to transmit the information. The pain of annihilating a much-loved labour is said to produce psychic messages of unparalleled clarity.

These messages are received by fellow Astropaths in various ways. Some appear as vague and troubling dreams, whilst others appear as visions or mystic portents. Others appear within whatever ritual method or divination technique the receiving psyker happens to practise. Thus warning of an Ork invasion might appear as a glistening imperfection in fish entrails, a looming cloud of smoke, bleeding orifices or a worrying combination of runes or sigils within a holographic matrix. Astropathic messages must not only be transmitted from one Astropath to another but decoded at the other end. Each Astropath employs slightly different symbols and each has a preferred style or "flavour". Some messages take weeks of poring over tomes of augurs and symbolism before they can be reconstructed, though the best Astropaths can do this word for word. Some remain a mystery forever. Some messages are received by Astropaths at entirely the wrong end of the galaxy and must be passed on to others who are nearer the place in question.

Some messages simply do not get to their intended recipient or are drastically misinterpreted along the way. In addition, there are too few Astropaths. Most worlds, especially those with small populations or on the fringes of the Imperium, have no Astropaths at all, and must rely on the infrequent visits of passing Chartist ships or Administratum census-takers to make contact with the outside galaxy at all. For this reason the Adeptus Terra cannot react quickly to every event in the Imperium, even when an event occurs that is great enough to attract the notice of the vast and ponderous bureaucracy. On most worlds, the Imperium feels very far away.

Imperial Calendar

The Imperium of Man uses a special Imperial Dating System derived from the original Gregorian Calendar of Old Earth that denotes the current year by the notation _year of the millennium_.M_millennium_. For example, the year 40,999 AD would be represented as 999.M41, while 41,002 would be 002.M42 and the year 2010 would be 010.M3. However, the year 41,000 AD would be 000.M41, since the new millennium starts at the year 001 and has no Year 0.

Threats to the Imperium

Despite being the largest empire that humanity has ever known, many planets within the Imperium feel isolated and alone in the deep void of space. Across all the peoples and planets of the Imperium, fear gnaws away at the psyche, worming mistrust and desperate faith into the conscious and unconscious mind. Time and again the universe has proved itself an uncaring and frightening place deeply hostile to the survival of humanity. People fight one another, the Warp rages, xenos attack and worlds die. The people of the Imperium watch their neighbours for signs of heresy and witchery. Mankind prays to the Emperor to protect them from the woes of the universe, of which there are many.

Dark Gods and Daemons

Time and again throughout history, the minds of Man have proven fertile soil for the seeds of corruption by Chaos. There are certain dark powers abroad in the universe that seduce the weak and foolish into their damnable service. These ageless beings, their names unspeakable, prey upon Mankind's needs and desires. With honeyed words, forbidden knowledge, bloody rites and festering secrets they lure humanity to become their slaves. Some within the Imperium choose to worship these Daemon Gods. The ways of these Chaos Cults are many. Some meet in clandestine rituals of sacrifice and incantation. Others are foolish scholars, meddling with powers beyond their ken. Others still are organisations, companies or political groups drunk with power gained through pacts with unspeakable creatures of the Warp. Perhaps worst of all are the instances of entire worlds that worship the Chaos Gods through ignorance or choice. All of these profane cultists invite ruin upon themselves, the Imperium and humanity. The Adeptus Terra, Planetary Governors and the Inquisition all watch for these disciples of Chaos, for the inevitable consequence of their meddling is pain, disaster and bloodshed. The ordinary peoples of the Imperium rightly fear these cults and their malevolent masters. On many worlds an undercurrent of paranoia, suspicion and fear of Chaos Cultists is the norm.

The very existence of such fell beings as the daemons of the Warp is a terrible secret to most citizens of the Imperium, as the Imperium's rulers believe such truths must be hidden from the minds of those who would fall prey to them. A daemon is a Warp entity, a terrible creature of thought and psychic energy brought forth into existence by the twisted needs of sentient beings, or at least so the high masters of the Ordo Malleus say. To even think of them is to invite their attention and only the steeliest mind, the most powerful faith in the God-Emperor, is enough to overcome their utter, monstrous evil. Inconceivable as it may seem, there are those who would consort with the daemon, for they whisper dark things in the night to those who would listen and make many promises of temporal or eternal power. They can be brought forth willingly, by the witch or by certain arcane sorceries, or they may try to force a way through into realspace through the unsuspecting portal of an untrained psyker's mind. However they become incarnate, if they achieve their goal, just one daemon can bring ruination to all it encounters. One need not talk of the Night of Silence in Atraxian III's capital, nor of the lost world of Abandoned Hope, which to this day is warded by the Inquisition, knowledge of its existence forbidden to all. Make no mistake, to face a daemon is to face damnation, to court a daemon is to embrace its dark masters.

Mutants and Witches

The degeneration of the holy human form is one of the Ecclesiarchy's greatest concerns. Environmental pollution, deliberate genetic alteration, stellar radiation, alien diets and simple evolutionary adaptation have wrought manifold changes upon the genome and body of Man across his vast stellar empire. Some of these mutants have a standard, stable, morphological type and are tolerated by the authorities—notable among them being the Abhuman Ogrynsand the ancient and nobleNavigators. But to find whole worlds where the human population has no eyes due to never-ending darkness, or unusually long legs because of millennia of nomadic living, is not unusual. Whether these aberrant populations are declared acceptable or not is the business of the Adeptus Terra.

But mutation can also be a sign of the influence of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. Just as they twist and destroy the minds and souls of Man, so too do they toy with his flesh, bending it into profane shapes, gifting strange abilities and creating monsters for their perverse amusement. Where such mutation is present, it is rightly abhorred. Few are willing to tolerate such a aberation within their midst and fear of mutants runs through the populations of many worlds, even those where such things have happened but once in a hundred generations. Perhaps worse still is the constant fear of becoming a mutant oneself. Many folk pray that should this worst of all things occur, they will have the strength to end their own lives, before the mob or the Inquisition does it for them.

Some poor fools are willing mutants, seeing the distortion of their flesh as a sign of favour from the Ruinous Powers. They seek out ways to gain more of these mutational "gifts," either by begging the Dark Gods for more of their touch or by doing their bidding in the hope of further reward. Others, more poignantly, claim innocence of any wrong doing or foul worship. Whatever the case, a mutant is a mutant and must be feared, hated and destroyed. This is but one of the many reasons Imperial citizens tend to be highly intolerant and many innocent men, upon finding themselves on a new world, have been murdered by a frenzied mob for merely appearing to be different.

The related question of witchcraft also exercises the minds of a great many of the Emperor's servants. Indeed, one whole arm of the Inquisition—the Ordo Hereticus—has the finding and destruction of these dangerous beings as one of its primary activities, and several other organisations exist to contain, exploit and control these human psychics. It is said by a heretical few that Mankind stands upon the brink of a great evolutionary change in the species, that every year the incidence of psykers rises and that one day the entirety of Mankind will become a new, psychic race much like the Eldar.

True or not, the psykers of the Imperium are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they enable the continued existence of the Imperium—the Astropaths, the Navigators, Imperial Sanctioned Psykers, the savant Primaris Psykers of the Imperial Guard, the Librarians of the Space Marines, even the Emperor Himself—these loyal, good and necessary servants of Mankind are psykers all. Yet they are few in number and for every mind that is strong enough to stand against the perils of the Warp, there are hundreds of others whose minor gifts, whether they seem a boon or a burden to the individual, are a clear danger to the worlds of Man. The employ of their talents can lead to intrusions into the physical universe by Warp entities or leave the individual open to manipulation by certain strains of perfidious xenos. By far the most dangerous are the witches, those who revel in their abilities and seek to use them in a personal quest for power. Alone, they can wreak untold havoc, intentionally or unintentionally. It is for this reason that, of all the threats from within, the populace fears the witch most. It is a hidden danger that can spring up unbidden even inside a man's own family, and parents dread the birth of a witch child above all things. All psykers must be given over to the appropriate Imperial body or be purified by death. Those psykers that appear to have evaded the tithe-men of the Black Ships, by accident or design, are guilty until proven innocent and the cleansing flame is their only fate.

Xenos

The Imperial Cult teaches that it is Mankind's manifest destiny to rule this galaxy. The Ecclesiarchy holds that it is the Emperor's will that Mankind and Mankind alone will bestride the stars, and to that end most Imperial servants fervently bend their lives. There are many other creatures in the galaxy, unclean creatures born of worlds far from the sacred soil of Terra, whose misbegotten forms are an insult to those who wear the shape decreed by the Lord of Man as fitting and right. Some of these creatures are weak and harmless, and easily extirpated, their planets expropriated for the true masters of the stars, their memory expunged. But there are other, stronger alien races that would see the will of the Emperor foiled and Mankind cast down.

Among them are the savage greenskinned Orks, whose numberless multitudes plague the galaxy with their endless desire for war. Hulking creatures, bigger than a man, they are mindless, yet powerful and unafraid. Elsewhere can be found the fickle Eldar, those who cannot be trusted, beings which extend the hand of friendship whilst clasping a dagger behind their back. Beware these fiends; their machineries of war are as swift and as deadly as their lying tongues. Likewise the Tyranids, blasphemous monstrosities who reduce worlds to bare rocks in their feeding frenzy, their endless armies made up of hellspawned bio-constructs.

Other things dwell in the dark places of space—the Hrud, whose very presence is poison to the rightful progression of time; the Tau, whose heretical technicians enslave technology to their grotesque ends with no thought for the proper rites; the Verminthiculians, wild alien mercenaries and reavers. Yet, while the alien is legion, the Imperium claims that Man is always the stronger, and the warmongering of xenos races is but the desperate savagery of those who know that their end draws near.

Heretics and Traitors

The Imperium is the only rightful authority of Mankind, as has been decreed by the Emperor, and His will, executed by the Adeptus Terra, is absolute. But Man has ever been a fractious and fickle creature and not all agree that the Emperor's rule is to be desired. Therefore the rule of Terra must, by necessity, be harsh. The size of the Imperium means the grip of its governance must be loose, and rebellion is only regarded to have taken place when one of the various Imperial tithes goes unpaid. Worlds which rise up to shake off the benevolent hand of the Emperor fall into one of the following four categories:

**Governmental Revolt:** Occasionally the ruling body of an Imperial world might misguidedly decide that their planet would be far better off outside of the Imperium. They might not have been visited for a thousand years or the Planetary Governor may harbour territorial ambitions of his own, but whatever their motivations, the result is the same—ruthless and immediate repression. These revolts must be dealt with swiftly and graphic examples made of the ringleaders, for if just one planet is shown to succeed in such a quest, others will certainly follow. It may take centuries to quash a revolt, but no human world is ever allowed allowed to secede for long from the Imperium. Assassination, planetary assault and, occasionally, Exterminatus are all righteous tools that may be employed to bring the wayward world to heel.**Popular Revolt:** It is a regrettable fact that many citizens of the Imperium suffer from the most horrendous living conditions in less-than-ideal environments. From time to time, a particularly bold demagogue may rally his fellows and overthrow a planetary government. This only becomes a problem if they then go on to defy the authority of the Imperium, otherwise the new regime will go unmolested—it is ordinarily not the Adeptas' way to impose a specific governmental form upon a population. Foolishly, flush with success, the rebellious people of a world often go on to do just that, mistakenly identifying the Imperium with their oppression and not their salvation. Also, it is sometimes better on planets with a particular strategic importance to ensure continuance of a specific form of governance. In both these cases the military forces of the Imperium are brought to bear.**Xenos Infiltration:** There are many creatures in the universe that exist by using other creatures as their proxy. These may be creatures from the physical realm, such as Genestealers, or beings such as theEnslavers, who somehow have a material being but dwell within the Empyrean. Sometimes these worlds carry on seemingly as normal, the rest of the galaxy unaware of the dark, alien cancer eating at their heart. As often as not, the alien-dominated population will rise up in armed rebellion. In either case, utter destruction of the infested inhabitants is, regrettably, the best course of action. This can be effected via Exterminatus, through tectonic destabilisation, the use of Cyclonic Torpedoes or viral (general or geno-tailored) bombardment, dependant upon the importance of the world and the possibilities for subsequent recolonisation.**Daemonic Infiltration:** A planet may turn to worship of the Dark Gods under a number of circumstances. Suppression of such revolts must be handled carefully—destruction of the population may be the Ruinous Powers' actual aim, as the psychic feedback in the Immaterium caused by the sudden deaths of millions of people can be enough to permanently open a rift between the Warp and realspace. Planetary invasion by specialist formations like the Space Marines or the Grey Knights is advisable, followed immediately by planetary cleansing or destruction through Exterminatus. 


	10. Chapter 10

Adeptus Administratum

Race

Mankind

Headquarters

Imperial Palace (Terra)

Government

Imperium of Man

Leader

Master of the Administratum

Military Forces

None

Establishment

Pre-Horus Heresy (30th Millennium)

The **Adeptus Administratum** is the administrative and bureaucratic division of the Adeptus Terra, the heart of the gigantic bureaucracy that controls the government of the Imperium of Man, consisting of untold billions of clerks, scribes and administrative staff constantly working to manage the Imperium at every level, from assembling war fleets to levying taxes. It is the largest of the departments comprising the Adeptus Terra, and ten billion Administratum adepts work in the Imperial Palace on Terra alone. Its billions of officials on Terra and throughout the galaxy are constantly carrying out population censuses, working out tithes, recording and archiving information, and the million other things that are necessary for the running of theImperium. Such is its immense size, that whole departments of the Administratum have been submerged by a sea of complex bureaucracy, becoming lost in loops of paper trails. Other departments have continued to dogmatically operate and carry out their founding function, even if the intent and requirement behind them no longer exists.

The Adeptus Administratum was originally created by the Emperor of Mankind as the Imperial Administration, the first bureaucracy for the newbornImperium of Man, during the closing days of the Great Crusade, following theUllanor Crusade of the 31st Millennium. The Imperial Administration was placed under the control of the Regent of Terra, Malcador the Sigillite, who was titled with the esteem rank of Chief of the Imperial Administration, and is recognised today as the first Master of the Administratum. As the single largest part of the Adeptus Terra, the bureaucrats of the Imperial Administration were to be responsible for the assessment of tithes, the distribution of resources, and essentially every administrative function the Imperium required to operate. Today, uncountable and ever-changing quantities of offices, departments and divisions deal with almost every facet of maintaining a galaxy-spanning empire of a million worlds, and every sector, world and citizen is subject to their scrutiny and intervention.

Within the Imperium, the agents of the Administratum are an innumerable and ever-present facet of interstellar commerce and politics, with the largest concentrations found on worlds with a particularly high military presence, high tithe requirements, or large-scale commerce. In particular, extensive Administratum offices on more developed worlds house hundreds of thousands of archivists, ordinates and prefects, who scrutinise sector-level operations with a keen eye and unwavering adherence to ancient doctrine. Typically, the Administratum takes little direct action in regards to matters of law or violations of it within the Adeptus Terra, as such matters are the concern of the Adeptus Arbites. However, the attention to detail that characterises much of the work of the Administratum often discovers criminal acts where they would otherwise go unnoticed, detecting pirates from reports of missing ships and locating smugglers from incongruous audits and tithe manifests. In situations such as these, the Administratum tends to hand matters over to another Imperial Adepta so that appropriate action can be taken. Even once others are involved, the Administratum continues to observe, ensuring that everything happens by the book and as efficiently as possible.

By virtue of wider necessity, even at the sector scale, the Administratum enacts collective decisions that will affect millions, even billions every day. Such actions are arrived at by a simple and utterly impersonal process of procedure, precedent, tradition, and cold calculation based on long-established criteria - heedless of the level of suffering or upheaval that they will cause at a local level. Likewise, the absolute importance the Administratum places on the minutiae of its nightmarishly complex bureaucratic system and the strict adherence to regulations, forms, protocols, and due process, can itself be the source of great friction and dissatisfaction at all levels of Imperial society.

Worse still can occur when error creeps into the system, such as when the consequences of inaccuracy, lost data, or simple incompetence manifest themselves. Though exceedingly rare, it is quite possible for the Administratum to simply "lose a world" thanks to administrative error, condemning it to isolation and privation, or wrongly apply a tithe grade and thus render a world an asset-stripped wasteland. It might even misfile a request for emergency aid, which consequently arrives years, even centuries, too late. The trouble that such errors can inflict on a personal level are not hard to imagine; indeed, many individuals have had their records mangled, lost, or misregistered. For such unfortunates, unless very powerful, the consequences can be as shattering as they are impossible to rectify.

Of course, the lack of personal enmity involved in the Administratum's actions means little to those who may find their lives turned upside down, their families suddenly displaced or shunted wholesale to a strange world, their protections removed, their property seized, or themselves simply left to starve. As a result, the Administratum is both hated and feared by all strata of Imperial society. Many, even in the other Imperial Adepta, find them hidebound, petty, and obstructive. It is quite possible that through its work, the Administratum will breed bitterness and discontent that can explode into outright rebellion or provide an opening for darker forces to gain purchase.

The Administratum is also a shockingly parochial organisation, its Adepts blindly ignorant of the nature of the world around them and naive of its many pitfalls and dangers. This naivete in itself can leave the Administratum's myriad local offices and workers vulnerable to individual canker, deception, and infiltration, and in any organisation where human greed, ambition, vanity, and hubris may be found, worse still can bloom. Ironically, the organisation's greatest defence against corruption is its own vast complexity and inertia. This makes it woefully difficult to derail or subvert in any widespread or meaningful way. If a thousand Adepts have to be purged simply to ensure the accuracy of a particular tithe-repository's records, so be it. For the Administratum, nothing, not even the lives of its servants, is personal.

Factionalism and Internal Strife in the Administratum

Any complex system that relives heavily on dogma and protocol is subject to interpretation, and differences in such interpretation can lead to schism and discord. The Administratum is no exception to this. Petty bickering, internal politics, and departmental rivalries can all cause problems within the Administratum, both on the larger and local scales, although the organisation is often at pains to never let such disputes show to outsiders. While these minor disputes rarely amount to much in the grand scheme of things, their aftereffects can have wider ramifications, like the ripples spreading from a stone dropped into a still pool.

Of all the Imperium's governmental divisions within the Adeptus Terra, the Administratum is regarded as the least prestigious, but its high-ranking members are among the most powerful people in the galaxy. If the Adeptus Terra is the machinery that drives the Imperium, the Administratum is the grease and oil that ensures this machinery operates. Without the Administratum, the machine would splutter to a halt and the Imperium would fail. As a result, theMaster of the Administratum is in actuality the most politically powerful member of the High Lords of Terra.

Many Administratum positions are considered hereditary. Typical Administratum Adepts labour within gargantuan vaults, sitting at logic-engines and Cogitatorworkstations. They can be considered quite learned by Imperial standards. Like other non-combatant servants of the Adeptus Terra, the members of the Administratum wear a monastic style of dress, their habits varying in colour according to their rank within the Adepta and their area of responsibility. The basic colour for the lowliest scribe is black; higher-ranking members have increasingly lighter shades of grey, and eventually pure white.

While the Administratum is primarily responsible for all logistical operations related to the civil aspects of the Imperium, the division of the Administratum known as the Departmento Munitorum is responsible for the logistics of theImperial Guard, organising military tithes, materiel supplies, troop movements and troop deployment. The Departmento is far more decentralised than the other divisions of the Administratum, establishing a presence on any world with a significant tithe-grade. Distress calls from an invaded world are processed by the Departmento, and will be passed up the ladder of bureaucratic command: star system to Sub-sector Command to Sector Command to Segmentum Command to the Senatorum Imperialis itself until one of them with enough resources and responsibility can deploy the needed reinforcements.

Divisions of the Administratum

The largest organisation in the Adeptus Terra, the Adeptus Administratum is itself divided into many branches. The greater majority of its constituents have no concept of how their work fits into any overall scheme, or even that they are part of the same bureaucracy. Comprised of innumerable divisions and offices it is unlikely that any one man, even the Master of the Administratum himself, has an idea of how many divisions exist within the monstrous Administratum. Their work is an end in itself and the single most important factor in the lives of Administratum Adepts. It is enough to perform the task; understanding is neither required, nor welcome. It is said by the soldiers of the Imperial Guard that for each fighting man there are a dozen scribes and at least two minor officials toiling, recording petty details that no one will use or consider. Most of the divisions are petty and of little interest. Known divisions of the Administratum include:

**Departmento Munitorum** - The Departmento Munitorum, also called the Adeptus Munitorum, is a department or sub-division of the Adeptus Administratum devoted to the general administration, personnel assignment, supply and logistics of the Imperial Guard. The Munitorum has ultimate responsibility for the raising of new Imperial Guard regiments, the training of new Imperial Guard troops, the provision of equipment and supplies to all regiments in the field, and the transportation of troops and equipment to and from theatres of war using the vessels of the Imperial Navy. It is primarily a logistical organisation, like the larger Administratum of which it is a part, but while the Administratum deals with the civilian logistics of running the entire Imperium of Man, the Munitorum deals solely with the military logistics necessary to fight and win the Imperium's wars on behalf of all branches of the Imperial armed forces.**The Estate Imperium** - The Estate Imperium is a division of the Administratum described as, "..the million-strong records office of the Administratum." Presumably its purpose is to keep and furnish records of Imperial Adepta when they are called for by the relevant arms of the Adeptus Terra. The division's head carries the title of Chancellor of the Estate Imperium. The Estate Imperium's importance is such that its leader sometimes holds a position in the Senatorum Imperialis of the High Lords of Terra.**Historical Revision Unit** - The Historical Revision Unit is another one of the myriad bureaucratic departments of the Administratum, whose Adepts are the indentured servants and Servitors known as Historitors who work within the Imperial Palace. Their job is to revise subversive records of Imperial history into versions that are more reverent towards the Emperor and the version of Imperial history that most glorifies His name. The Historicus is the title of the unit's chief Adept. One of the important duties of the Historical Revision Unit is seeking out historical records and, if need be, destroying them when ordered to do so by their superiors in the Administratum. Specially designated units of the Historical Revision Unit known as Deletions Teams carry out this function. Their most common duty is performing the vital task known as an Edict of Obliteration - the deliberate destruction of any vital records or historical documents pertaining to an individual or organisation that has been declared _Excommunicate Traitoris_ by the Emperor of Mankind, the High Lords of Terra or theInquisition.**Officio Medicae** - The Officio Medicae is the primary arm of the Administratum that deals with public health and medical-related issues in the Imperium, operating government-run medical facilities throughout the galaxy and on many Imperial worlds. In addition, they seem to oversee the management and quarantine of worlds or groups afflicted by plagues, such as those created and spread by Nurgle, the Chaos God of Plague. Like much of the Administratum, it is plagued by bureaucracy and procedure.**Logis Strategos** - The Logis Strategos is the primary intelligence gathering and analysis agency of the Administratum. Its primary function is to analyze the myriad of threats to the Imperium presented by xenosand the Forces of Chaos and devise suitable strategies to counteract them.**Munitorum Strategic Intelligence Collective** - The Munitorum Strategic Intelligence Collective is a secret arm of the Administratum that is composed of senior Ordo Xenos Inquisitors and Magos Biologis Genetors and Xenobiologists of the Adeptus Mechanicus. It is their primary mission to compile biological and logistical data on the Tyranids to determine their weaknesses and devise suitable counter-measures to future Hive Fleetinvasions. These secretive reports are sent directly to the High Lords of Terra themselves. Their analysis of all the details of the Tyranid invasions thus far has seen them draw a startling conclusion as stark as it is terrifying: the Hive Fleets faced by the Imperium to date are but parts of a far greater whole, and this whole will be arriving at the Imperium's borders within less than a standard century. They estimate that Imperial mobilisation levels will need to be increased by a minimum of 500% - which would effectively include every able-bodied man, woman and child on every world in Segmentums Solar, Obscurus and Tempestus - to have even a hope of stopping this dire threat.**Tithes Chamber Notaries, sub. Planetary Census (Abhumans)** - The Tithes Chamber Notaries, sub. Planetary Census (Abhuman) is a sub-division of the Adeptus Administratum that oversees the classification and recognition of stable and sanctioned Abhuman strains within the Imperium. Of these, forty-six types are now listed as extinct, and no records have been received of a further twelve strains for over a generation, suggesting that they too have died out or been assimilated back into the general population of Mankind. The status of the remaining fifteen Abhuman races is quite varied and there is permanent disagreement about their specific classification amongst the Adepts of the Tithes Chamber Notaries. The most noteworthy and contentious matter concerning the Adepts is the Ogryn (_Homo sapiens gigantus_) matrix of Abhuman strains.**Divisio Auditae** - Unique to the Calixis Sector is the Divisio Auditae, which oversees matters of significant interest to the Administratum from incorrect tithes to the adjudication of Warrants of Trade granted to Imperial merchants in the sector. The Divisio Auditae was established in the early 8th century of the 41st Millennium, created as one of the first acts of the Lord Calixis Marius Hax, and it reports directly to Hax himself and to its superiors in the Administratum.**Questors** - Known more commonly (but unofficially) as Quaestors, these Auditors are empowered to travel the Calixis Sector and demand access to all records of any planetary government or organisation they come across; only the most powerful of individuals can deny a Quaestor's demands, though even these few exceptions try Lord Hax's patience. Anything they discover that seems worthy of attention is reported, to be acted upon by other agents of Lord Hax or other Imperial agents as deemed appropriate. Under the command of Prefect Salassar Aoghan Annovestes, a minor functionary from the Sephris Secundus elevated through the ranks of the Administratum, the ranks of the Divisio Auditae have swollen to include over 6,000 separate Questors. Each possesses the freedom to move and investigate whatever and wherever they see fit, much to the consternation of the Inquisition, Planetary Governors, and Rogue Traders who see such freedom of remit for an official who is essentially a bureaucrat as dangerous and intrusive into matters better left in other hands.Ranks and Titles of the Administratum

There are countless ranks and titles used within the Administratum; this system of nomenclature is also used within the Adeptus Terra as a whole. Some examples include:

**Master of the Administratum** - The Master of the Administration is the titular head of the Adepta who sits on the Senatorum Imperialis as one of the High Lords of Terra.**Adeptus** (or **Adept**) - An Adept is the title of all members of the Adeptus Terra, from the highest-ranking to the most petty of functionaries.**Prefectus** (or **Prefect**) - Prefect is a title used by Administratum officers and officials.**Master** - Master is a title used by Administratum departmental heads.**Ordinate** - Ordinate is a title used by minor administrative officials.**Curator** - Curator is a title used by Administratum Adepts who maintain the ancient records of the Imperium; the rank also requires associated historical and linguistic knowledge and is therefore considered somewhat prestigious.**Scribe** - Scribe is a title used by the lowly functionaries of the Administratum responsible for keeping records.**Cipher **- Cipher is a title used by a special form of Imperial messengers; they memorise dictation with a single scan, repeating it verbatim when they reach their destination; they have no knowledge of the messages they carry.**Menial** - Menial is a title used by lowly, non-specialized but free workers recruited from the non-Adept population, essentially the Administratum's janitors and mechanics.**Subordinate** - Subordinate is a title used by the hereditary slaves of the Adeptus Terra who serve as engineers and craftsmen, as well as in other unskilled occupations. 


	11. Chapter 11

Departmento Munitorum

The ******Departmento Munitorum**, also called the **Adeptus Munitorum**, is a department or sub-division of the Adeptus Administratum devoted to the general administration, personnel assignment, supply and logistics of theImperial Guard. The Munitorum has ultimate responsibility for the raising of new Imperial Guard regiments, the training of new Imperial Guard troops, the provision of equipment and supplies to all regiments in the field, and the transportation of troops and equipment to and from theatres of war using the vessels of the Imperial Navy. It is primarily a logistical organisation, like the larger Administratum of which it is a part, but while the Administratum deals with the civilian logistics of running the entire Imperium of Man, the Munitorum deals solely with the military logistics necessary to fight and win the Imperium's wars on behalf of all branches of the Imperial armed forces.

The Departmento Munitorum was founded in the early years of the 31st Millennium during the Great Crusade to help provide strategic command for the Imperial Army. The structure of the Imperium at that time was very different to what it is like in the late 41st Millennium. In the earliest days of the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium, all that was required of the fighting forces of the Imperium was conquest. The Imperial Expeditionary Fleets that set out from Terra only carried with them the means to fulfill a portion of their supply needs, and simply took what they needed from the worlds they conquered in their travels. Upon the completion of a successful Imperial Compliance action on a world, the Expeditionary Fleet would move on, leaving the assimilation of the planet into the Imperial fold to fleets of pioneers and Terran colonists. Each world, in time, would become fully capable of supporting itself and contributing to the needs of the growing number of Imperial Expeditionary Fleets.

Such a state of affairs could not continue, for eventually each fleet would exhaust its supplies and be too far from a Compliant world capable of resupply. In these times, the resources necessary to fight a campaign were organised by the commanding officer of each individual Expeditionary Fleet, a necessity of the times, but one that was wholly unsuited to the growing size and complexity of the Imperium. The newly formed Council of Terra began recruiting those individuals whose minds could function in a number of specialties: as war leader, diplomat, exactor, mediator and logistician. Such able-bodied men and women suited to the task of stellar logistics were few and far between and the Council empowered these administrators with the duty of maintaining the Emperor's armies in perpetuity. This earliest incarnation of the Munitorum was known as the Corps Logisticae for a while, then a division within the naval administration, then was briefly overseen by the superb logistical brilliance of Malcador the Sigillite and his appointed subordinates. Only shortly prior to thePrimarch Horus' appointment as Imperial Warmaster following the victory in the Ullanor Crusade had the Corps Logisticae grown into a full Departmento, with all the bureaucratic advantages that it brought them. But initially some mistakes had been made, such as confusion over planetary coordinates and non-standard equipment reaching theSpace Marine Legions.

The earliest pioneers in organising a unified Imperial supply and recruitment structure had almost insurmountable obstacles to overcome, not least of which was the reluctance of each Imperial Expedition's corps of officers, most of them Space Marines, to relinquish control of such things to mere mortals, even when they were more qualified to administer them than Astartes. As the Imperium continued to expand across the galaxy from Terra and the scale of conquered space became relatively manageable, such resistance to change was understandable, if short-sighted. As time passed and the demands of a constantly changing battlefield required greater and greater ingenuity on the part of the Imperial war machine, Imperial Army soldiers would often go into battle equipped with a multitude of different weapons, ammunition stocks, armour and training. Rumours persist that there were darker reasons for it being desirable that no Imperial force could look to its own supply in these times, but evidence of such motivations cannot be substantiated.

The very success of the earliest Expeditionary Fleets were to sound the death knell for such objections, for soon the Imperium had become so large that such resistance to more centralised logistics and bureaucracy became untenable. Central control of the Imperial forces (primarily the Imperial Army) was given to the newly-named Departmento Munitorum shortly before the start of the Horus Heresy. From this point onwards, every Imperial Army regiment (and after the Heresy, every Imperial Guard regiment) would look to the Departmento Munitorum to raise, supply, train and dispatch it. In recognition of the great importance of this work, no less than three seats amongst the lords of the Council of Terra were given to the most senior officers of the Departmento Munitorum: the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Army, the Lord Commander of the Estate Imperium and the Master of the Administratum.

Role

The Departmento Munitorum continues to maintain the ultimate responsibility for the raising of new Imperial Guard regiments, the training of new Imperial Army troops, the provision of equipment and supplies to all regiments in the field, and the transportation of troops and equipment to and from theatres of war using the vessels of the Imperial Navy. It is primarily a logistical organisation, like the larger Administratum of which it is a part, but while the Administratum deals with the civilian logistics of running the entire Imperium of Man, the Munitorum deals solely with the military logistics necessary to fight and win the Imperium's wars on behalf of all branches of the Imperial armed forces. The Munitorum is financed by tithes of men, money and materiel drawn from the Imperium's myriad worlds, and all Imperial planets able to support the Imperial military forces in a sector are regularly called on to do so. To make sure the tithes are provided as and when required, bureaucrats of the Departmento Munitorum are present on almost every Imperial planet as part of its branch of the local Administratum. Representatives of the organisation are also present on all Imperial Navy starships, and wherever Imperial Guard forces are stationed.

Organisation

The Departmento Munitorum is organised to allow each relevant level of the Adeptus Terra to respond effectively to the myriad threats that confront the people of the Imperium, regardless of their size and location in the galaxy. The local divisions of the Departmento can raise tithes from worlds close to a war zone without needing a response from the higher levels of the Munitorum's bureaucracy. As the level of a threat increases and more local departments of the Munitorum become involved, the amount tithed, and the amount of planets tithed from, increases. At this point, higher levels of the Departmento Munitorum will also become involved, and may funnel additional resources from other parts of the Imperium into a given war zone. The local Adepts of the Departmento Munitorum in an Imperial sub-sector have the legal authority to impose instant tithes, without forewarning, as and when required. Because of this, true central command over the Imperial Guard's logistics from Terra is not needed or even advantageous, due to the functional autonomy of each level of the organisation. The Departmento Munitorum does not handle logistics for the Adeptus Astartes or for the Adepta Sororitas' Orders Militant, as each Space Marine Chapter is a fully self-contained military organisation and theSisters of Battle depend on the Ecclesiarchy to serve their administrative and logistical needs.

Command

The Departmento Munitorum is effectively represented among the Imperium's rulers by three members of the High Lords of Terra and is ultimately required to answer to the demands of all three, including:

**Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard****Chancellor of the Estate Imperium****Master of the Administratum**Senior Offices

The Departmento Munitorum consists of four Senior Offices, each of which answers to one of its three directors:

**Officio Tactica** - Subordinate to the Lord Commander Militant, this office seeks to determine the logistical needs required for every active Imperial war zone.**Office of the Imperial Pursary** - Subordinate to the Chancellor of the Estate Imperium, this office seeks to maintain a record of all the funds and materiel taken in tithes by the Munitorum and all funds expended by the Departmento to meet the demands laid out by the Officio Tactica. The bureaucrats in this office essentially serve as the paymasters of the Imperial armed forces.**Office of Records** - Surbordinate to the Master of the Administratum, this office is responsible for creating and maintaining all of the Munitorum's records, some of which can go back for more than ten thousand standard years.**Schola Progenium** - The Schola Progenium are coordinated and ran under the auspices of the Adeptus Ministorum, even though their charges' destinies are usually determined by the Munitorum once they come of age. The Schola Progenium are primarily responsible for the upbringing and training of orphans, predominantly those of Imperial Guard and Navy officers who have died in the service of the Imperium. Many go on to becomeCommissars, high-ranking Imperial officers, members of the Adepta Sororitas, or even servants of theInquisition.Offices Minoris

Below the Senior Offices are a vast multitude of lower Offices which are charged with overseeing different aspects of the Imperial armed forces' logistics and preparedness. Many of these offices coordinate their activities with theAdeptus Mechanicus.

**Administratum Assay Corps** - This division of the Munitorum is responsible for ensuring the efficiency and incorruptibility of the Munitorum's bureaucracy where it interfaces with that of the larger Administratum. They represent the bureaucracy that other bureaucrats must contend with to get their own jobs done.**Commissariat** - The Commissariat is responsible for the recruitment, training and overseeing the activities of its corps of Commissars.**Engineer Corps** - The Munitorum Engineers Corps often works in close concert with the Mechanicus and is responsible for all military enginnering projects that are not conducted while under fire at the frontlines.**Field Enforcement Corps** - The Field Enforcement Corps enforces all Munitorum and Imperial regulations on the Departmento's personnel. They are particularly concerned with prevention corruption by Munitorum bureaucrats.**Labour Corps** - The Labour Corps often works in concert with the Mechanicus and the Engineer Corps in constructing bases, airfields, research facilities, orbital docks, space stations and any other facilities required by the Imperial armed forces. The Labour Corps' personnel is composed largely of indentured labour, penal labour and Servitors.**Pioneer Corps** - The Pioneer Corps is the division of the Munitorum that often scouts and prepares planets to serve as new Imperial military bases, preparing the way for the arrival of the Engineer Corps and the Labour Corps.**Siege Auxillia Corps** - The Siege Auxillia Corps is the division of the Munitorum that aids Imperial military forces in warehousing, transporting, constructing and maintaining the equipment needed for long-duration planetary and urban sieges. 


	12. Chapter 12

Adeptus Astronomica

The **Adeptus Astronomica** has the duty of maintaining the Astronomican for the Imperium of Man, the psychic beacon in the Warp directed by the mind of the Emperor that provides guidance for the mutant Navigators that pilot all Imperial starships in the galaxy. They recruit members through the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. The Astronomica is largely composed of psykers; its non-psyker members are hereditary servants. The organization is based inTerra's Forbidden Fortress, where even the Adeptus Arbites' Judges andInquisitors must receive an invitation to lawfully enter. The Adepta's head is the Master of the Astronomican, who represents the organisation as a High Lord of Terra and a member of their Senatorum Imperialis.

The task of the Adeptus Astronomica is to train the young psykers they receive from the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, so that they can serve in the Chamber of the Astronomican. The whole organisation is basically a training institute run by a class of older members known as Instructors. Some of the Instructors are given the title High Instructor and specialise in a certain area of teaching. The day-to-day administration of the Astronomica, such as maintenance of its facilities, are taken care of by a body of administrative functionaries.

Young psykers recrited from the Adeptus Astra Telepathica are initiated into the Astronomica as Acolytes. They are taught not just how to use and control their psychic powers but are introduced to the Lore of the Astronomican. They learn the value of their lives, study philosophy and are gradually brought to a deeper understanding of the universe and the nature of the Warp. Those who achieve this mystic state become the **Chosen** and are eventually called to serve in the Chamber of the Astronomican beneath the Himalaya Mountains in the Imperial Palace on Terra alongside 10,000 other Chosen, whose psychic energies will be used by the mind of the Emperor in the Warp to power the Astronomican as he directs its psychic beacon across the galaxy. In only a few short months each Chosen will die, their psychic and life energies completely drained by the sheer intensity of the demands the Emperor's mind will place upon them. As such, new Chosen must constantly be obtained from the Black Ships of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica.

The status of Chosen is considered a great honour among the Imperium's Sanctioned Psykers. To fall short of attaining this goal is not a failure; rather they go on to become Instructors or are absorbed as administrative functionaries in the Forbidden Fortress. Those adepts of the Adeptus Astronomica who do achieve Chosen status are considered above the Instructors and even the Master of the Astronomican in rank. Their heads are shaven and they wear yellow robes and the scarlet badge of the Chosen. The rest of their lives are spent in prayer and contemplation until they are called to serve in the Chamber of the Astronomican.

Astronomican

The **Astronomican** is a psychic beacon located on Terra, which projects an astropathic beam 70,000 light years across the Milky Way Galaxy which humanNavigators utilise to pilot the starships of the Imperium of Man through the otherwise unnavigable chaos of Warpspace. As the beam generated is psychic it exists within the psychic universe of the Warp. The beam can be psychically sensed from almost anywhere in Warpspace and is vital for faster-than-light travel since the mutant human Navigators use it as the only fixed reference point in the galaxy which is required for a starship to reach its intended destination when it travels through the Warp. Without it, the Imperium could not survive as an interstellar society as Warp travel would be impossible. It is uncertain how faster-than-light travel was done in the Dark Age of Technology before the Astronomican existed, though it can be safely assumed that a form of faster than light travel that is non-dependent on entering Warpspace and may be similar to Necron phase drive technology was used, or more likely that Warp jumps were simply unable to reach across as many light years as at present because of the lack of a fixed reference point. This is how the Tau's faster-than-light stardrive technology functions, as their vessels make shallow "Warp dives" across a much smaller length of realspace than current Imperial starships, and is probably how Mankind once operated as well.

At the very start of the Great Crusade in ca. 800.M30, the planets closest to Terra could be easily reached by blind jumps through the Immaterium. The Empyrean of that time had only recently calmed after the great turbulence of theAge of Strife following the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh. However, it soon became clear that to travel further from Terra, the Imperium's Navigators would require a stable astronavigational reference point within the Immaterium to triangulate their current location against if longer Warp jumps were to be attempted with any hope of success.

Following the successful conclusion of the Unification Wars, the Emperor first ordered the construction of the Astronomican on Terra, which would enable his forces to expand the Great Crusade to the stars beyond Sol. Huge numbers of Tech-priests were brought from Mars to oversee the project and the majority of the Terran population were drafted to construct the towering machine-buildings needed to support this labour. At the time the Astronomican was the single largest artifice on Terra, and the entire device was merely a focus through which the Emperor could direct His fathomless psychic energies to generate a partly self-sustaining telepathic signal through the Empyrean (although few were aware of this fact). The psychic navigational beam the Astronomican generated was able to propagate through the Warp and those attuned to its unique frequencies and modulations, theNavigators, were able to use it as a beacon and pole star when plotting journeys through the Immaterium. By this beacon the Warp could be travelled at speeds and with a margin of safety that had been unprecedented, although the risk of course could never be fully mitigated. The Astronomican was an incalculable boon to both the Great Crusade and the fledgling interstellar domain of Mankind that it was creating. In a similar way, the Emperor was able to shut down the Astronomican or interrupt the beam at will. Only a handful of individuals knew that the great signal was actually powered by the Emperor's psychic powers, and they lived in fear that should He be disabled or killed, the galaxy would be plunged into a new Age of Strife. Such was the Astronomican's effect that even in that distant age of the Imperium's first founding some referred to it as the Divine Light, or the Emperor's Light, often without fully realising the literal truth of those words.

With His Imperial Webway Project only in its planning stages, the Emperor resorted to powering such a reference point Himself, using the focus chamber He had built earlier beneath the Imperial Palace to project a beam of unimaginable psychic power and range through the Warp. So colossal was the Emperor's psychic might that in the early days of the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium He could power the Astronomican while He was off-world leading the Imperial war effort personally. For all His might, however, the Emperor still had limitations, and the task of powering the Astronomican so that its beacon was perceptible over the whole of the territory of the growingImperium of Man became more and more taxing, weakening Him to the point He was nearly choked to death by a powerful Ork Warlord on the world of Gorro, only to be saved in the nick of time by His Primarch son Horus. The ever-growing demand of the Astronomican upon the Emperor was one of the reasons He handed command of the Great Crusade over to the Warmaster Horus after the victorious Ullanor Crusade against the Orks and returned to Terra to complete His Webway Project, an initiative intended to make the Astronomican all but unnecessary as with an extension into the Webway, the starships of Mankind would be able to cross the galaxy in the blink of an eye without having deal with the deadly dangers of the Warp.

The Astra Telepathica

n addition to this invisible beacon among the stars, the forging of the Imperium amongst the stars would not have been possible without the creation and continuation of the Astra Telepathica. This special corps of inter-stellar communicators was created by the Emperor during the final months of the conquest of Terra, as the Emperor had foreseen their absolute future need. For the most part the Emperor did not favour the use of psychic talents in others. As apsyker himself, albeit one of unprecedented power and control, He was well aware of the dangers inherent with human contact with the Warp. Furthermore the Age of Strife on Old Earth had its own "witch-kings" and possessed psykers to attest to those dangers, some of whom the Emperor had personally slain. However, he was able to identify those strong enough to maintain control of their abilities and so with some prudence certain psykers were employed in a variety of special roles in the Imperium, and the Astropaths were to be such an exception.

The Horus Heresy

Just before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium, the Emperor of Mankind's ImperialWebway Project required more and more of the Emperor's psychic might as he sought to penetrate the corridors of the Eldar's Webway and claim it for Mankind, dangerously weakening the Astronomican's signal. Malcador the Sigillite then suggested a compromise: the beacon would still be guided by the Emperor Himself, but a large part of the required energy would be provided instead by the psychic and life energies of 10,000 sacrificial psykers, allowing the Emperor to pour His own psychic might into finishing His great project. The Emperor approved the notion only with the greatest of reluctance, and also made it clear that this would only be a temporary solution, for He had no intention of claiming the lives of thousands of men and women on a regular basis, indefinitely.

Tragically, the Emperor would never resume His former role as the active ruler of the Imperium because of the wounds He suffered at the hands of Horus during the Horus Heresy's climactic Battle of Terra. Although His mind would continue to calibrate the psychic beam's frequency following His physical internment in the Golden Throne, the Emperor would never be able to resume powering the beacon by Himself, and the temporary measure of having the Astronomican powered by the regular sacrifice of thousands of psykers became permanent. At the present time, the Astronomican is a complex piece of machinery powered by 10,000 specially-trained psykers, whose life-forces are exhausted in a matter of months maintaining the beacon. Their ranks must therefore be constantly replenished with fresh recruits drawn from the tithe of psykers brought by the Black Ships to Terra to be used by the Adeptus Astronomica.

Adeptus Astronomica

It is the duty of the portion of the Adeptus Terra called the Adeptus Astronomica to maintain all aspects of the Astronomican, including training those Sanctioned Psykers who will power it. The "psychic light" of the Astronomican is beamed from Terra, from the Chamber of the Astronomican buried deep beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains. The Astronomican is powered by thepsykers trained by the Adepta, though it is the omnipotent will of the Emperor Himself that constantly directs this psychic energy across the depths of approximately 70,000 light years of galactic space. Although the Emperor does not provide the psychic energy of the beacon, only He has the psychic control required to handle such immense amounts of psychic energy and direct it across the galaxy.

The psykers who power the Astronomican are recruited into the Adeptus Astronomica through the division of the Adeptus Terra called the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. They are initiated into the Adeptus Astronomica as Acolytes, and are taught how to use their powers as well as the philosophy of the Adepta and the pivotal role it plays in the continued existence of the Imperium. Astronomica Acolytes learn the lore and technical arcana of the Astronomican. Some achieve a mystic state, gaining the status of "Chosen". It is these Chosen of the Astronomican who are eventually called to serve in the Chamber of the Astronomican. Here they fuel the Astronomican's beacon with their psychic energies; as their powers are drained by the Emperor to fuel the beacon, the life forces of the Chosen slowly fade and they die, their lives a necessary sacrifice for the continued good of the Imperium and the existence of Mankind in a hostile galaxy. This psychic power is then directed by the mind of the Emperor across the width of the approximately 70,000 thousand light year range of the beacon. Because Terra is situated in the galactic west, the Astronomican does not cover the extreme Eastern Fringe of the galaxy. Warp travel beyond the Astronomican's reach is severely limited - thus, it is the Astronomican's reach that effectively determines the true borders of the Imperium.

Destroying the Astronomican would most likely halt or badly cripple all Imperial Warp travel within the galaxy, effectively bringing the Imperium of Man to its knees, both economically and militarily.

The mutant Navigators, as well as other psykers of any intelligent species, can sense the Astronomican. It is described as a sensation of silvery light and a chorus of many heavenly voices, beginning first with a solitary voice and progressively growing into an angelic choir. It is suggested that "pious Space Marines" who can hear the Astronomican possess the ability to fall into a meditative trance when they focus on it, perhaps as a result of their genetic descent from the Emperor through the gene-seed of their Primarchs. Captain Gabriel Angelos of the Blood Ravens Chapter of Astartes was known to occasionally enter a sort of battle trance when he "heard" the Astronomican while in battle, improving his prowess in combat for the duration of the trance.

The Chamber of the Astronomican is located deep beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains of Terra. The original purpose of the device which would become known as the Astronomican has been lost to time; what is known is that it was built by the Emperor of Mankind Himself as a focus for His fathomless psychic power. Because of its vital role in the maintenance of the Imperium, the Astronomican has great religious significance for believers in the creed of the Imperial Cult and the Emperor's divinity and it is also sometimes metaphorically referred to as "the Light of the Emperor", "the Ray of Hope" or "the Golden Path."

Limitations of the Astronomican

Warp Storm activity can affect the overall range of the Astronomican but it generally has a range of approximately 70,000 light years. As the galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter and Terra is approximately 25,000 light years towards the galactic southwest, the Astronomican barely penetrates the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy; even less so in the wake of the arrival of the Warp-smothering Tyranid Hive Fleets.

Tyranid Attraction

The Astronomican's potent psychic beacon, unbeknownst to the Imperium's Adepts, is what is drawing the Tyranidsto threaten the Milky Way Galaxy and all of the Imperium of Man. It is also drawing them, inexorably and irresistibly, towards Terra itself.


	13. Chapter 13

Navis Nobilite

Race

Mankind

Headquarters

Palace of the Navigators,Navigator's Quarter(Terra)

Government

Imperium of Man

Leader

Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators

Military Forces

Private House Armies

Establishment

Pre-Horus Heresy (30th Millennium)

The **Navis Nobilite** is an ancient organisation of mutant Terran nobility predating even the creation of the Imperium of Man by several thousand standard years. It is comprised of noble families who are all human mutantscalled Navigators who have the unique psychic ability to navigate spacecraft through long distances in the chaotic transdimensional eddies of the Warp. The Great House of the Navis Nobilite are some of the wealthiest and most politically powerful collections of nobles in the Imperium.

Navigators are both a human sub-species as well as a collectively powerful political organisation of the Imperium known as the Navis Nobilite, a guild of Imperial nobles that represents all of the Navigator bloodlines or Houses of the Imperium. The members of the Navis Nobilite are exempt from many Imperial laws, and even the Imperial Inquisition tends to be careful in the handling of individual Navigators due to the political power of the Navis Nobilite. However, Navigators guilty of treason, heresy or something equally serious are hunted down without mercy. Such affairs are many times dealt with internally by the Navis Nobilite itself before the Inquisition has any reason to act and potentially blacken the name of Navigators as a whole amongst an Imperial population already superstitious and distrustful of them. Each Navigator family is very close and often very large, and different families are often allied by marriage, while others are political and economic rivals. Although individual Navigators are not directly employed by the Imperium, every Warp-capable spacecraft in the Imperium has at least one Navigator who acts as the Warp pilot.  
Navigators are organised into families known as "Houses" (sometimes "clans"), through which both the Warp Eye mutation and their esoteric but priceless knowledge of Warp navigation has been passed down through the generations. Because of their monopolies, ancient lineages, and accorded Imperial rights, Navigator families are usually both immensely wealthy and influential, their power extending to all corners of the Imperium. In particular, their influence on matters of interstellar trade is beyond that of any other group in the human-controlled galaxy. Perhaps most importantly, they have an Emperor-given right to conduct their own affairs as they see fit and thus are effectively outside of the laws and authority of the Imperium in most cases. This freedom is only void in particular circumstances of overt rebellion or treachery, and even then great care is taken by the Adepta in confronting and punishing such crimes. A Navigator clan's private retainers, soldiers and bodyguards can number in the thousands. The Houses largely police their own, binding themselves together within a shared culture and through lines of alliance, fealty, and marriage. However, wary of the balance of power, the high master of the Navis Nobilite, the Paternova, and his agents are often merciless when one clan or family should, by its treachery or excess, endanger the others.

Whilst ostensibly the role of the Paternova, and by extension the Novators who lead the individual Houses, is to manage the power of the Houses and protect their interests from the greed of the Administratum or the ignorance of the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition, they do in fact have a far more important role to play. This role is in the cultivation and protection of the Navigator Gene. Vital to the survival of the Houses is the continuance of the birthing and training of skilled and potent Navigators. However, the competition between the families has also led to each tampering with and altering the evolution of some of its children, in the hopes of creating more powerful and able Navigators with which to defeat their rivals and win more lucrative and farther-reaching contracts. Over many centuries, these deliberate alterations of the Navigator Gene has created many different Navigator lineages, giving rise to some strains of bloodlines possessing the Navigator Gene in which certain powers, abilities, and mutations are more prevalent.

An Unpleasant Necessity  
One of the fundamental tensions that exists between the Navis Nobilite and the rest of the Imperium is the fact that Navigators are patently mutants in a culture that does not often suffer the mutant to live save as a brutally oppressed underclass. Many dark legends and fables of excess, witchery, and murderous power have grown up about them, and not all without cause. As a result, Navigators are often shunned and feared, and the popular dread at meeting the gaze of their three-fold eyes means that many prefer to have dealings with them only when they absolutely must. The maintenance of the valuable Navigator Gene has also meant that over thousands of standard years most Navigator families have acquired malformations, strange afflictions, or mental abnormalities. In some Navigator families, the genetic corruption of the line has become so severe that only a few members of the clan can move amongst the rest of the Imperium. The remainder remain confined to the family's great estates or in sealed tabernacles aboard ship, their deformities hidden from sight.  
These differences have often led to conflict in the past, and localised factions of the Ecclesiarchy have, on a number of occasions, burned Navigator holdings and executed Navigators as Heretics. Such incidents are often brought violently to heel by the Ecclesiarchy itself, before the wrath of the High Lords of Terra is visited upon the culprits and any above them in rank that allowed such action to come to pass. After all, no one can afford to offend those who hold the key to voyaging between the stars. The Inquisition is one of the few bodies that can truly move beyond the immunity of the Navigators' charter, and its eye is ever kept on the Navigator clans. Even the Inquisition must be circumspect and certain in this task. However, in rare extreme cases, the Ordos have destroyed entire clans and carried their patriarchs and matriarchs off in the Black Ships for final sanction.

Great Houses

Almost nothing is known of the earliest history of the Navigator Houses, though some amongst the Ordos of the Inquisition suspect that the ancient stasis vaults beneath the mansions of theNavigator's Quarter on Terra must contain records and artefacts rivalling those of the Inquisition in age and significance. Whatever secret histories of Mankind's darkest ages are hidden beneath those marble palaces are likely to remain obscured, for the Novators of the Great Houses are beholden to no other authority and even the most determined and relentless of Inquisitors would find it all but impossible to breach their closed society and force them to acknowledge any external law. Few organisations within the Imperium hold as much power as the Great Navigator Houses of the Navis Nobilite. Their position of control over nearly all Imperial shipping and interstelar commerce places them in a rare position of power, one that sits almost beyond the reach of both theAdministratum and even the Inquisition itself. It is a position that the Great Houses have mercilessly exploited down through the millennia and used to gather vast wealth and influence. Though across the long span of years this power has risen and fallen, it has endured longer than almost all other Imperial edifices. The only aspect of the Great Houses that matches their political endurance is their constant struggle with each other. In their internecine struggles for position and favour, the Houses use all manner of means to outdo their rivals, sometimes even engaging in open warfare against one another. Only the strict control of the House Novators and the carefully maintained codes of behaviour and tradition of the Navigators keep such conflicts from spiralling out of control.

Whatever the details of their roots, the Navigator Houses appear to have enjoyed a special status since time immemorial. They must have been an established and powerful body at the beginning of the Emperor's Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium, which would have been impossible without their services. Were it not for the Navigators that guided each Expeditionary Fleet, the Great Crusade would have taken millennia to prosecute, not the scant two Terran centuries it actually took before the calamitous events of the Horus Heresy plunged the nascent Imperium into galaxy-burning civil war. It must be presumed that a number of Houses fell to the insidious lies of the Warmaster Horus, for it would not have been possible for Horus to deploy his fleets with the speed and cunning he did were this not the case. Whatever the truth, the Navigator Houses appear to have emerged from the Heresy with their power and reputation largely intact - confirmation, were it needed, of their critical role in the very existence of the galaxy-spanning interstellar empire that is the Imperium.

Navigator Lineage

In the Imperium, there are thousands of Navigator Houses, each with a history that can be traced back hundreds if not thousands of Terran years, but still the number of Navigators is a literal drop in the ocean compared to the numberless masses of humanity. All these Houses are not the same either in strength or makeup, and over the millennia many have diverged from the first great families that are said to have exhibited the Navigator Gene at the time of the Great Crusade. Some have dwindled and died off over the years, some few turned outlaw, whilst many others have prospered in divergent ways of life creating branches and offshoots of the Great Houses across the Imperium. Whilst it would be impossible to catalogue and critique each of the Navigator families, many can be grouped into broad categories, representing their unique strain of the Navigator Gene as well as their area of influence and way of life. The four groups which are prevalent throughout the galaxy are known variously as the Magisterial Houses, the Nomadic Houses, the Renegade Houses, and the Shrouded Houses:

**Magisterial Houses** - A Magisterial House is a Navigator dynasty most closely related to one of the original Navigator families dating back to the time of the Unification Wars. These Houses are amongst the wealthiest and most traditional of the Navis Nobilite and will possess great holdings within the Navigator's Quarter on Terra. Their influence reaches to the very edges of the light of the Astronomican. The Magisterial Houses maintain traditions, customs and practices that have served them for millennia. They are masters of the traditional Navigator crafts and have more control over the malign mutations that afflict those with the Navigator Gene. To be part of a Magisterial House is to know without question the purity of one's blood and the ancient power and nobility of one's family. Due to the long-established maintenance of their bloodlines, the Navigators of the Magisterial Houses are less susceptible to the symptomatic mutations which often affect Navigators because of their exposure to the power of the Empyrean.**Nomadic Houses** - A Nomadic Navigator House has forsaken ties of sector and star system, relinquishing their terrestrial holding within the Navigator's Quarter on Terra or other Imperial worlds. Instead, over the centuries, these Navigator Houses have taken wholly to the stars to become wanderers and gypsies, their bloodlines preserved on vast fleets of starships constantly on the move. Due to their void-based lifestyle the members of the Nomadic Houses are perhaps the most skilled of Navigators in the Imperium due to their long exposure to both the void and the Immaterium and the inherent necessities of astronavigation. This gives them an understanding of space and the Warp second to none, but like all of the Voidborn, these Navigators may have a great deal of difficulty relating to the Imperium's varied planetary cultures.**Shrouded Houses** - A Shrouded House has suffered great losses or shame within the more established dominions of the Imperium. They have opted to move their powerbase completely to the edge of known space, where they cling to the barest strands of their former status and power. Though they may be rich in skill, knowledge or lore, something in the past of Shrouded Houses has blighted them and reduced them to a state so far from their once exalted position that they are sometimes cruelly called "beggar houses" by other, more fortunate (and far less polite) counterparts. A Navigator who is a member of a Shrouded House is part of a fallen bloodline that is slowly rising again to stand defiant against those that once cast them down - or at least, so they are told by their elders. A Shrouded House's loss in standing has often forced it to flee to the margins of the Imperium and to develop a cunning and opportunistic mindset alongside a skill that is often lacked by more comfortably indolent Houses. This tends to make these Navigators far more resourceful than their more well-established kin, while at the same time their Warp Eye often becomes more perceptive.**Renegade Houses** - A Renegade House represents a Great House that has completely forsaken the traditions and ancient practices of the Navigator families in their quest for power, or it may have been turned on by the rest of the Navis Nobilite, harrowed, and driven into exile. Dabbling heavily in the alteration of the genes of their children in order to improve their lot, the tampering of Renegade Houses often leads to the development of hideous mutations and the existence of unconscionable monsters in their lineage, which in turn leads to rejection by the Paternova and a hunt to extinction by the Inquisition. In some cases, however, a Renegade House's actions have birthed new strains of the Navigator Gene and given rise to families with unique abilities and potent powers. Navigators that are a part of a Renegade House have cast aside the sacred Navigator traditions as small-minded and restrictive and instead have embraced the glory and limitless potential of their ancestry - or so the houses believe, to comfort themselves. It is whispered that such regions as the Koronus Expanse is home to several Renegade Houses like the secretive Gazmati and the infamous Nostromo.Notable Navigator Houses**House Aleene** - This Navigator House now enjoys the favour that was once the preserve of Lord Angevin's inner circle of Navigators within the Calixis Sector. House Aleene has profited greatly from the upheavals beyond the Periphery Sub-sector.**House Belisarius (Magisterial House)** - This is one of the oldest and most respected Houses of the Navis Nobilite. House Belisarius maintains an ancient and close relationship with the Space Wolves Chapter ofSpace Marines and exclusively provides Navigators for the Space Wolves' Chapter fleet. In return, the Space Wolves gift the House with a small contingent of Space Wolves Astartes called the Wolfblade who serve as the House Celestarch's (Novator) bodyguard and his strong right arm when the House's interests need to be defended by military force.**House Benetek** - This Navigator House now enjoys the favour that was once the preserve of Lord Angevin's inner circle of Navigators within the Calixis Sector. House Benetek has ascended to great wealth recently and it was "Mad" Abenicus of that House who first postulated a route through the Warp Storms the Calixis Sector into the Koronus Expanse, having made an exhaustive study of ancient texts as well as being wracked by a series of prophetic visions.**House Brabazon (Nomadic House)** - House Brabazon is a far-ranging Navigator bloodline that chooses not to abide in one single location. It scions guide vessels the length and breadth of the Imperium, seemingly gripped by a wanderlust that keeps them from establishing the sort of permanent holding most other Houses maintain. At one time, the Navigators of House Brabazon were counted amongst the most able in the entireSegmentum Obscurus, their star charts the most accurate, but in one fell swoop, something happened that caused the House's charts, no matter where or how they were stored, to become corrupted according to some grand and unreadable pattern. Unable to trust the firmly established Warp routes of their once jealously guarded charts, they instead seek to forge new ones and pray the curse upon their House does not lay them low once more.**House Cassini (Magisterial House)** - A Navigator House as ancient as the Imperium itself, House Cassini was at one time a rising star within the Houses in and around the Calixis Sector. But the events of the Chorda Succession lad House Cassini low, providing a salutary lesson in the dangers of becoming too embroiled in the dealings of those who acknowledge no limits to their ambition. Now their fortunes are much reduced, and its scions have been forced to take to the Koronus Expanse in an effort to claw something of their former glory.**House Castrana****House Dakkar (Renegade House)** - The name of this Navigator House is a byword for hubris. House Dakkar came into conflict with the Paternova, most prominently during its notorious trade war with House Malaspina during the Angevin Crusade. What had begun as a quarrel over shipping rights into the newly conquered Calixis Sector soon escalated into outright assassination and sabotage. Without the intervention of Saint Drusus, the war might have plunged the entire region into an age of renewed bloodshed and destruction. The Paternova ordered the two Houses involved to be declared outcast. While House Malaspina was eventually allowed back into the fold after some years of penance, House Dakkar was stripped of all its assets and holdings and cast into the darkness between the Calyx Expanse and the ill-fated Mandragora Sector. What little is known of the returned House Dakkar suggests that they harbour a venomous hatred of the Imperium and their erstwhile brothers in the Navis Nobilite, and are determined to act in any way possible against the interests of both.**House Davor-Jarni****House Ferraci****House Granicus** - This Navigator House is notable for being one of three Navigator House who work exclusively for the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, providing Navigators for their fleet of Black Ships.**House Hals-Viati****House Helmsburg****House Jenassis****House Locarno****House Malaspina (Shrouded House)** - This particular Navigator House has always been held in a measure of distrust by certain bodies of the Imperium. While the matter is not common knowledge, not a single Space Marine Chapter of the First or Second Foundings ever allows a Malaspina Navigator to operate on their vessels, nor do they ever embark upon a starship navigated by a scion of House Malaspina. The reasons for this prejudice are unknown even to the most senior members of the Adeptus Terra and the Ordos of theInquisition, though a few suspect that the House's tenebrous origins lie in the shrouded past of the cataclysm known as the Horus Heresy. Since that distant time, House Malaspina has striven to expand its fortunes, though it has never truly succeeded in doing so.**House Mercator (Shrouded House)** - Very little is known of this mysterious Navigator House, for it deliberately keeps very much to themselves. They maintain very few obviously grandiose holdings. Over the millennia, the scions of House Mercator have come to be regarded as cursed in some manner, though not in any way that can be easily defined or because they have suffered some obvious misfortune. Rather, the House's name simply appears to be linked to numerous others who have met their doom beyond the borders of the Imperium, from the grandest Rogue Trader dynasties to the most far ranging Explorator fleets. Because of their veiled past, the Navigators of House Mercator exist in a shadowy world of service and espionage.**House Modar** - House Modar is one of three ancient Navigator Houses that form a owerful triumvirate that traces its roots all the way back to the conquest of the Calyx Expanse by the Angevin Crusade over a thousand standard years ago. Houses Modar, Yeshar, and Rey'a'Nor earned a special place in the history of the region. They served with such honour and distinction during the Angevin Crusade that each secured its fortunes within what became the Calixis Sector for generations to come.**House MacPherson** - This Navigator House is notable for being one of three Navigator House who work exclusively for the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, providing Navigators for their fleet of Black Ships.**House M'edici****House Mercator (Shrouded House)** - Agents of this ill-starred House have learned of House Ortellius' misfortunes in producing viable gene-stock, and their masters are actively using this knowledge in exchange for information useful to their own shrouded interests. Ortellius continues to prepare for the coming political storm, when House Mercator reveals the truth, and countless rivals are likely to descend upon them in what will surely be the bitterest war of the House's long history.**House Nostromo (Renegade House)** - Nostromo is an ancient and notorious Navigator House whose fate has ever been entwined with that of the Rogue Traders of the Haarlock Dynasty. Ever since the reformingEcclesiarch Sebastian Thor himself bestowed upon the Haarlocks their Warrant of Trade, the line had been served by Navigators of House Nostromo. Despite its links to such a glorious dynasty, the House of Nostromo has ever been considered ill-starred.**House Ortellius** - A substantial rival of House Visscher both in wealth and status, this Navigator House's holdings in the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse are far more visible to the populace at large. But over the last two or three generations their Navigators have slowly withdrawn from those regions' Warp routes. This decline has largely gone unnoticed, but most would conclude that Ortellius has merely taken up more lucrative positions in the Koronus Expanse and elsewhere. But the truth is much darker, for around a standard century ago, it was discovered that the purity of Ortellius gene-stock has substantially declined, and by the close of the 41st Millennium it was likely that the House would be unable to sire any viable offspring at all.**House Ptolemy** - This Navigator House is notable for being one of three Navigator House who work exclusively for the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, providing Navigators for their fleet of Black Ships.**House Re'a'Nor** - One of the three ancient Navigator Houses that forms a triumvirate that traces its roots all the way back to the conquest of the Calyx Expanse by the Angevin Crusade over a thousand years ago. Houses Rey'a'Nor, Modar and Yeshar earned a special place in the history of the region. They served with such honour and distinction during the Angevin Crusade that each secured its fortunes within what became the Calixis Sector for generations to come.**House Sixtus****House True****House Typhon** **(Renegade House)** - Once a mighty Navigator House, House Typhon has fallen as far as it is possible for a Navigator House to fall. Even before its fall from grace, House Typhon was known to have associations with a variety of undesirable factions within the Imperium's vast institutions, having links to a number of Radical Inquisitors, of which several were Excommunicated. Its last Novator, Orthrus, is said to have delved into realms thought forbidden to the bulk of Humanity. Over time, Orthrus forged his own school of vile philosophy, coming to believe that the Navigator Gene represented the only true and ordained path for the human future. The foundations of what would eventually become known as the Elutrian Confederacy were laid in this way and the doom of House Typhon was ensured.**House Visscher** - One of the most ancient Navigator Houses operating in the Koronus Expanse, House Visscher maintains extensive holdings across the entire segmentum and its palace on Terra in the Navigator's Quarter is held to be one of the finest ever built. Despite its wealth, this Navigator House is not well-known outside the Navis Nobilite. This is due to the manner in which it has amassed its fortune by specialising in clandestinely gathering new astropathic data by serving great Rogue Trader dynasties and far-rangingExplorator fleets.**House Xan'Tai** - This Navigator House now enjoys the favour once the preserve of Angevin's inner circle of Navigators within the Calixis Sector. Xan'Tai has negotiated an all-but exclusive charter to provide its best Navigators to Battlefleet Calixis.**House Yeshar** - One of three ancient Navigator Houses that forms a triumvirate that traces its roots all the way back to the conquest of the Calyx Expanse by the Angevin Crusade over a thousand years ago. Houses Rey'a'Nor, Modar and Yeshar earned a special place in the history of the region. They served with such honour and distinction during the Angevin Crusade that each secured its fortunes within what became the Calixis Sector for generations to come.Minor Houses**House Cedd (Shrouded House)****House Casa D'Kark****House Dorel****House Emed-Useli****House Gazmati (Renegade)****House Krassimal****House Modar (Shrouded House)****House Nomikos****House Term'L (Nomad House)****House Vor'cle (Magisterial House)****House Yimora**Resources of the Navis Nobilite

Due to their sheer importance to the Imperium's well-being, the Navigator Houses have attained a vast degree of wealth and influence. The Navis Nobilite can trace its formal origins back to ages long past, and since that time the Navigator Houses have amassed unimaginable riches. Every starship that plies the Warp routes of the Imperium and beyond has at least one, and most likely an entire cabal of Navigators to guide it safely through the Immaterium. The Navis Nobilite uses the wealth that it accrues from this critical task to amass still more. None except perhaps the Paternova - the most senior Patriarch or Matriarch of all the Great Houses - can have any true notion of just how much wealth the Navis Nobilite wields, and its influence and alliances stretch far beyond pure material riches. Certainly, the Navigators appear to have interests in sundry organisations the length and breadth of the Imperium; some have close ties with Rogue Trader dynasties, the Adeptus Mechanicus, and even the vaunted Chapters of theAdeptus Astartes. The Navigator Houses act as backers and investors in some of the most ambitious undertakings, especially those the most powerful of Rogue Trader expeditions. Thus, as Rogue Traders employ Navigators to forge new Warp routes, the Navis Nobilite profits doubly, for even while establishing those routes, they can improve their charts, to their own benefit and that of the Imperium.

Despite the staggering wealth that the Navigator Houses enjoy, they do not generally maintain the sort of visible power structures that most other Imperial institutions rely upon. Unlike the Rogue Traders and Chartist Captains, they do not operate fleets of starships bearing their livery and, unlike the great Imperial merchant combines, they do not maintain their own trading centres or industrial installations. Instead, they own part interests in all manner of such endavours and sometimes the hand of the Navis Nobilite is very well hidden indeed. The Navigators do not generally maintain large standing armies, although many Navigator Houses employ a cadre of highly trained, well equipped, and sometimes genetically-enhanced household troops utterly loyal to their bloodline. When circumstances dictate, the Navigator Houses draw on their vast wealth to employ the very best mercencary forces available and, with sufficient warning of impending war, can field composite armies rivalling an orbiting Imperial defence force in size and resources. What the Navigator Houses do maintain, however, are the most splendid palaces, exquisite estates, and gorgeous pleasure gardens it is possible to imagine. Most are located far from the eyes of the average man and woman of the Imperium, though they often maintain more utilitarian, if still richly appointed, chancelleries in most large starports and planetary capital cities.

From the outside, even the most modest Navis Nobilite palace is likely to be a rearing edifice dressed with marble and decorated by the most accomplished sculptors of the age. Beyond the walls, delicate towers pierce the sky while glittering domes hint at the untold riches within. What the casual observer might not note is the banks of unseen defences, from automated weapons turrets to the most impregnable forms of Void Shielding. Within, every visible surface is guilded with precious metal leaf or hung with sumptuous fabrics. The domes house vast libraries or ancient texts, sumptuous ballrooms, serene pleasure gardens, and luxurious harems. Lumens crafted from the rarest of cut jewels light dining halls that can accommodate thousands of guests, while serried ranks of liveried attendants stand to attention nearby. Entire armies of servants and menials attend to their masters' every conceivable whim, while the lower levels are hives of activity where the most skilled cuisiniers prepare feasts of delicacies imported from all over the Imperium.

Beneath the servants' levels lies something far darker. In armoured and warded dungeons are housed those spawn of the Navis Nobilite fated never to guide a starship through the roiling Sea of Souls. These are the genetic rejects and hideous by-blows of the long millennia of intermarriage and genetic manipulation. They are mindless, puking monstrosities that bear precious little resemblance to anything born of a human womb. Many are destroyed soon after birth, while others are allowed to live so that the House genetors might study them in the hope of avoiding such mistakes in future generations. Just as the lowest levels hide those of the Navis Nobilite that the Navigator Houses wish to keep from prying eyes, so there are areas where only the most highly ranked members of the House may pass. As a Navigator grows older and his body is ravaged by the curse of his bloodline and exposure to the Warp, he slowly withdraws from the company of his kin and shuns contact with the outside world entirely. While his mind and his ability to navigate a Warpship remain unaffected, he continues to enjoy the luxury his status affords, albeit in his own private chambers attended by his own staff of servants, guards and chirurgeons. Should his mind fall victim to the Navigators' genetic curse, however, then his fate is to descend to the lowest dungeons of his own palace where he takes his place amongst the other vile monstrosities of his House.

Paternova

The Paternova is the leader, and most powerful both in terms of psychic and political power, of all the Navigators of the Navis Nobilite. The Paternova lives in the Palace of the Navigators, which dominates the centre of the Navigator's Quarter on Terra. From the moment he or she is installed, the Paternova never leaves this palace. The staff, soldiery and other retainers of the Palace of the Navigators are all drawn from the Paternova's own House, and are all replaced with each new Paternova who assumes the office. The chief among a Paternova's servants is the Paternoval Envoy, who often serves as one of the High Lords of Terra, representing the interests of the Navis Nobilite on the Senatorum Imperialis. If anybody were to know the secrets of the Navigators' origins in the lost history ofMankind, it would be the noble who rises to become the Paternova.

The chief role of the Paternova is his ability to somehow amplify the "Warp Sense" of other Navigators. This is a direct result of the extreme mutations a Paternova suffers during his ascension from being one of the Heirs Apparent found amongst all the Novators of the more powerful Navigator Houses. For this reason, the Paternova is sometimes described as the guiding father of the Navis Nobilite whose powers transcend the Warp itself. The importance of this link is demonstrated during the rare interregnums that periodically occur between the reign of one Paternova and his replacement. During these times, all Navigators other than the Heirs Apparent suffer a considerable reduction in their ability to navigate the Warp. If this state of affairs were to continue for long, much of the Imperium would collapse into anarchy, as both commercial and military Imperial starships would be unable to quickly or safely traverse the Warp, with many being lost to the Empyrean completely.

The Paternova can often live for a thousand standard years. When he does die, his successor is chosen from amongst the waiting Heirs Apparent, the most powerful Navigators of the Great Families. From the moment of his death, all the existing Heirs Apparent undergo a dramatic physical metamorphosis. They grow larger and stronger, and the psychic mutations that characterise all Navigators become even more pronounced. The Heirs Apparent gain the ability to survive underwater, in poisonous environments and even in the hard vacuum of space. Their natural aggression is increased, and they are drawn into combat with each other. As each Heir Apparent is killed, those who survive change physically even more, until only one remains alive. It is this vastly changed and extremely powerful individual who becomes the new Paternova.

As soon as a new Paternova is installed within the Palace of the Navigators, all of the other Navigators find the standard strength of their own psychic abilities restored, though not all are always restored to the same degree of effectveness. Those Navigators belonging to the same House as the Paternova find their abilities greatly enhanced, as though their blood ties enables the Paternova to transmit his powers more effectively to his kin. Navigators belonging to the House of the old Paternova lose this benefit, and many Navigators suddenly find their powers greatly diminished. The reasons for this alteration in power levels remains unknown to Imperial genetic science.

Novators

The Novator is a patriarch or matriarch that rules over a Navigator House, the figurative—and often biological—father or mother of the family. It is the role of the Novator to hold the family together and manage their fortunes, fostering new contracts and contacts for the House and jealously guarding those already in its possession. Above the scores of Novators stands the Paternova, head of all the Imperium's Navigator Houses. From his throne on ancient Terra in the Palace of the Navigators, he guides the destiny of the Houses, ensuring their continued place of power within the human-settled galaxy. While the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Great Houses are collectively known as Novators, each House may choose its own name for the nobleman or woman who leads its endeavours.

Navis Scion

Navigators are a fortunate few of the Imperium born into privilege, their politically affluent clans wellsprings of intrigue as grim and convoluted as their mutating bodies. While some Navigator Houses empower agents to act as intermediaries between themselves and Imperial society, others look within, selecting from among their number cunning Navigators who can wield the political influence of the House to greatest effect. Though the Navis Nobilite are a part of the Imperium, each Navigator House possesses great autonomy, and their influence and power is on par with the Imperium's greatAdepta. Thus, it is only natural that many Houses have diplomats and representatives for dealings with the larger Imperium. These Scions of the Navis Nobilite are the faces of the great Houses, groomed to act as diplomats and power brokers, seeing to it that their family's interests are protected.

Equally at home in the estates of the Navigator Houses or the courts of the Imperial elite, Navis Scions are masters of conversation and courtly protocol. Often selected from amongst their fellows based on their relative lack of disfiguring mutations as much as their social skills, these Navigators attract a great deal of attention on their many public outings. Fated to be the centre of attention in virtually any courtly setting, Scions revel in the gawking of onlookers, using their instant fame to woo potential allies and mock known foes. It is rare to see a Navigator in public, and rarer still to see one surrounded by an admiring (or simply curious) crowd. Whether regaling an audience with tales of travel beyond the reaches of the Imperium or wounding a boor's pride with a witty remark, Navis Scions are exceptionally socially adroit.

However, a Scion bears a responsibility far greater than providing dazzling conversation. He is still expected to be an adroit Navigator for ships travelling the Immaterium, and serves as a vital link between his House and its allies. He is expected to act as its agent and representative, seeking out new clients for his House and seeing to it that existing allies have the House's best interests at heart. The intimidating presence of a full-blooded Navigator can quickly sway the outcome of a trade negotiation. Likewise, the enemies of the Nobilite must be careful to hold their tongues when a Navis Scion glides confidently into court. Wielding the political and economic power of his House, a Navis Scion is someone to be feared and respected.

The extensive education and political experience of Navis Scions make them valuable companions. In the course of their duties, many Scions become advisors to Rogue Traders, Imperial Navy Admirals, and other high-ranking Imperial officials who respect their expertise and pedigree. Many an Imperial noble has turned to a Scion for advice in matters of politics, trade, and even personal matters. Though the rumour that a Navigator's third eye can glimpse the future is only partly true, that does not stop most Scions from acting as psychic advisors, knowing full well that the right prophesy muttered in the right ear is capable of fulfilling itself.

One cannot simply choose to serve his House as a Scion. Scions must be groomed from an early age, entering courtly life before the mutations that are their heritage manifest. As a result, the highly public lives and exotic inhuman beauty of most Scions lead many to believe the stories of monstrously deformed Navigators to be no more than fables the Houses use to intimidate rivals. A Navigator cannot escape the betrayal of his own body, and as a consequence, most Scions have short public careers. However, the alliances brokered and social doorways opened in this time can serve a Navigator throughout his prolonged existence, and may even be refined and enhanced through clever manoeuvring later in life. Still, many Scions become so enamoured with the dance of courtly intrigue that they cannot bear to leave it behind when the time comes. More than a few Scions have resorted to extensive reconstructive surgery and invasive bionic augmentation to maintain the almost-human features that once made them presentable and celebrated in Imperial high society.

Traditions

Each Navis Nobilite House has their own unique traditions and positions within the House's hierarchy dependent upon their own histories and culture. For instance, House Belisarius is led by an individual Novator referred to as the Celestarch and has its own standing military trained by the Astartes of the Space Wolves Chapter. The Space Wolves long ago concluded a special alliance with House Belisarius to provide its Celestarch with a small force of Space Wolves known as the Wolfblade to serve him or her as a personal honour guard. A nobleman or noblewoman known as a Novator serves as the matriarch or patriarch of a Navigator House. A Novator can either be the figurative parent or a biological parent of the other members of the family, but always serves as the House's legal and titular leader. A Novator is expected to manage their household's fortunes and to keep their kin united in fostering the House's political and economic agenda. These duties include fostering trade contracts for the House whilst jealously guarding those profitable enterprises the House already holds in its possession. The strict controls a Novator imposes along with the Imperium's legal Navigator codes prevents devastating economic and even outright military conflict from erupting between the Navigator Houses. Ranked above the many Novators of the different Houses in the hierarchy of the Navigators sits the powerful noble known as the Paternova, who oversees the fortunes of the Navigators as an Imperial elite.

Trade Wars

The most common conflict involving the Navis Nobilite are the conflicts between the various Navigator Houses. Each Navigator family's power and wealth is based on the trade it can control, its contracts and pledges to various Imperial mercantile organisations, and the courses that its Navigators can plot. All these matters are areas of fierce competition between the different Navigator Houses and often the focus of campaigns of espionage, violence, and assassination. Such conflicts can cause huge amounts of damage to the infrastructure of the Imperium, often occurring without the direct knowledge of the other human nobility or the Imperial authorities until it is too late. Traditionally, this damage has been controlled by the formal declaration of a "trade war" under the terms of the ancient Navigator Convention. A trade war, once declared, allows all Navigator Houses involved to act against their rivals using military and covert means. According to the terms of a trade war, those outside of the Navigator Houses involved should not be affected or harmed by its progress. However, in reality, subsidiaries, allies, and associates of the Navigator Houses immersed in a trade war are usually dragged into the conflict whether they want to be or not. While a trade war is meant to control and contain competition between the Navigator Houses, many Houses act outside of the constraints of a declared trade war. Such illegal actions usually involve intermediaries, assassination guilds, or mercenary armies for hire - sometimes even using xenos like Orks or Kroot.

Navigator Duels"_I thank you for this lavish meal and for all of your hospitality this evening. As such, I regret - most deeply regret - that I must put forth this filthy accusation of duplicity against your most illustrious House. I am afraid that nothing short of a challenge to a duel of honour will sate my House now. You have until Scarus eclipses the Banestar to select the champion who will most certainly exonerate you._"— Aristide de Balafer, before his 23rd victorious honour duel

Navigator Houses are highly secretive and highly competitive organisations. They jealously guard the knowledge of safe Warp routes from each other. A House's fame and fortune depends on its ability to safely guide vessels through the Warp and the reputation for doing so that it maintains. The greater the reputation, the more influence and wealth its clients possess. The Imperial Navy, the Space Marine Chapters, Rogue Traders and other Imperial Adepta seek the services of the most reliable Houses. Each House's reputation is dependent on the Warp charts it has recorded and amassed over millennia and each House protects these charts from their rivals. The various Houses employ entire private armies and Servitor security systems to protect the data secured deep within the bowels of a major Navigator House's headquarters. Still, various individuals and organisations still occasionally attempt to steal from rival groups, even if few actually succeed, and many Houses employ agents skilled at such subterfuge. Rival Houses also employ more insidious means of undermining each other. In the loftiest spires, palaces, and courts of the higher echelons of Imperial society, whispered rumours and hints of dark secrets can bring one Navigator House to its knees and raise a rival in its place. The sullied reputation of a single Navigator can stain his entire bloodline.

Sometimes, however, when back-room dealing and silent wars are not enough, one Navigator House openly challenges another in some fashion. In certain sectors, such as the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse, this often takes the form of Navigator duels - a contest between two massive organisations, settled by two individuals. Though the exact origin of Navigator duels is unknown, the practice of using them to settle disputes between Houses became common in the Calixis Sector during the rise of the so-called Elutrian Confederacy. During this time, Navigator Houses associated with the Elutrian Confederacy, such as House Typhon, claimed that they alone knew the true path to perfection. The champions of this movement began calling for Navigator duels to prove their supposed superiority. When the Elutrian Confederacy was disgraced and House Typhon fell into ruin, the traditions that they had established for Navigator duels remained prevalent in the region and are still used to settle many of the disputes between the Navigator Houses of the Calixis Sector today.

First comes the formal challenge - Navigator duels are public affairs within the secretive realm of the Calixis Navigator Houses and a family loses much face if it does not accept the challenge. This, and the fact that the loser is expected to pay a hefty fine of money, resources, and knowledge to the winner, means that duels are never issued for frivolous reasons. After the challenge has been issued, each House then has a number of days to select a champion to upkeep their honour and choose a second to act as witness and potential replacement. It is considered a great honour to be chosen as a duellist and a chance for a young Navigator to increase his standing among his family and other Navigator clans. The location of the duel is remote, such as an abandoned spire, the bridge of an empty starship moored in deep space, or a windswept mountaintop on a wilderness planet. The only witnesses are the duellists' seconds. The Navigators prefer to cloak themselves with an aura of mystique, and also prefer that no one outside their secretive society witnesses the full force of their powers.

The duel takes place with careful formality. The participants bow to each other and then slowly uncover their third eye. At a prearranged signal from the seconds, the duellists unleash the full force of their powers, locked together as they gaze unflinchingly into each other's Warp Eye, enduring the horror of the boiling chaos of the Empyrean. It is a duel of physical and mental strength, as each tries to subdue the other with their horrific gaze, and can last seconds or hours. The first to succumb on bent knee yields victory to his opponent. The duel is rarely to the death, for the lives of most Navigators are precious even to their bitter rivals. Even so, one or both duellists might face long months of recovery, their minds wracked by the strain. When the duellists return to their respective Houses, the seconds report the results of the duel and a representative of the losing House must attend a feast in the victor's honour, where he formally signs over the promised compensation. His House suffers a loss of face and a besmirched reputation, which may have vast repercussions in the wider Imperium.


	14. Chapter 14

Adeptus Arbites

Race

Mankind

Headquarters

The Hall of Judgement (Terra)

Government

Imperium of Man

Leader

Grand Provost Marshal

Military Forces

The Arbitrators (Arbitors)

Establishment

Pre-Horus Heresy (30th Millennium)

The **Adeptus Arbites** is the Imperial Adepta that serves as the galactic police force of the Imperium of Man, responsible for enforcing Imperial Law (the _Lex Imperialis_) on all Imperial-controlled worlds. They have been granted the right by the High Lords of Terra to serve as judge, jury and executioner to any Imperial citizen they discover having broken Imperial law and the concept of due process is not one that generally applies in the Imperium. However, in those cases where Imperial law is unclear or the law breaker has committed a truly heinous deed or is of unusually high-ranking stature, the offended will be taken back to an Arbites Precinct House for judgement by an Arbites Judge, the sentence to be carried out immediately. Imperial justice is swift and sure, but not always just.

Only through constant watch and the execution of brutal law can the Imperium survive, and it is the Adeptus Arbites who carry out this function. While the armies of the Imperial Guard struggle to hold back the aggression of alien empires and protect the worlds of Mankind from without, the Adeptus Arbites roots out rebels, recidivists, and threats to the stability of the Imperium from within. They operate as they best see fit, using their greater training and weaponry to tackle foes that might be beyond the scope of local Enforcers, or in many cases to deal with a planetary government which has itself become corrupted. Remorseless and single-minded, Arbitrators do not forgive or forget any crime, and pursue their quarry relentlessly until the Emperor's Justice has been served.

The laws of the Imperium of Man are a complex web of tradition, obligation, and local custom. Thus, they can vary from world to world or sector to sector, with each Planetary Governor, local prefect, or headman pronouncing his own laws. Arbitrators care little for such trivialities, and enforce the serious crimes against the Imperium while leaving such petty matters to local officials. Murder or theft, for example, are considered inconsequential unless they affect the Imperium directly, are perpetrated against Imperial officials, or somehow fundamentally threaten a world's security or safety.

Arbitrators have little pity or compassion for the transgressions of Imperial citizens. Years of dealing with the scum of the galaxy has made many of them cynical and bitter. Others have become religious zealots, seeing the Emperor's divine hand in the letter of the law and only death is deserved for those who would break it. A few might maintain idealistic notions for bringing order to the Imperium, but the realities of endless, sometimes horrific crimes constantly erode such notions. The arrival of an Arbitrator patrol is seldom welcome, given the brutal way in which they operate during their investigations, arrests, and executions, even though it might mean an end to vicious criminal enterprises or corrupt Imperial or planetary officials.

Arbitrators must deal with ineffectual or corrupt local government agencies. These are often an Arbitrator's greatest foes as he must clean up a local situation, taking over the Enforcers of a hive city, orbital station, or even entire planet to purge it of crime and corruption in a series of bloody and unforgiving sweeps.

On Imperial worlds the Adeptus Arbites are the last, most absolute law, answering only to their commanders and the Judges of star systems and entire sectors, and not to local authorities. It is a thankless task, for the anonymous, helmeted Arbitrator usually only receives fear and hatred for his actions. The members of the Adeptus Arbites are the final bulwark against heretical uprisings and other major threats. Their precinct-fortress is the often last bastion of Imperial rule during revolutions or invasions, holding out to the very end whilst alerting outside Imperial agencies and Adepta of the dire situation. Each member knows that should they fall, so follows the planet. To merely survive in such a hostile environment, Arbitrators must show no hesitation, regret, or compassion for those they protect, and they must consider every citizen guilty until they are proven innocent.

The Adeptus Arbites face a monumental task to enforce the law across countless Imperial worlds. Those that take the oaths, don the Carapace Armour, and take Shock Maul in hand are often obsessive and pitiless individuals, who see the law as an extension of the Emperor's will upon His subjects, and its enforcement their sacred duty. Whether they are skilled in combat or possessed of a keen mind, an Arbitrator knows he faces an implacable and remorseless foe, one which he must counter with all the talents at his command. To be part of this Adepta is to be apart from their surroundings, for after training in the Schola Progenium, Arbitrators are never assigned to the world of their birth. They are beyond local authorities, serving none but higher Imperial law. Once a man puts on the distinctive dark armour of an Arbitrator he stops being merely a man, and is now a representative of the greater Imperium upon a world, there to ensure planetary compliance with Imperial law.

Arbitrators are always active with investigation and enforcement, for crime never sleeps. The surrounding populace overwhelmingly outnumbers them, so it is essential to detect and crush crime before it grows too strong. On many worlds, they bring massive firepower to bear at the slightest hint of resistance, often reacting to crimes before they occur, and preemptively arresting citizens who are "at risk" of becoming criminals. Skilled Arbitrators are masters of urban conflict and crowd control, with a natural understanding of Imperial societies and the nature of places such as the packed hab-blocks of an overpopulated Hive World or the savage villages of a Feral World, each requiring their own special tactics to police.

Arbitrators often tap local Vox-networks, develop networks of spies and informants, and even infiltrate any suspect organisations to snare the lawless in surgical strikes where their superior weaponry and training can prevail over larger forces. Such investigations require long hours of dedicated detective work, patience, and cunning to root out violations of Imperial law against the myriad other offences against lesser authorities. Their lives are often at risk, and not just from their criminal quarry. During the course of an investigation all manner of things might come to light, including the secrets of powerful individuals. In these cases an Arbitrator can face more danger from supposedly loyal allies than the scum he is pursuing.

Throughout the millions of worlds of the Imperium, crime is rife. Not just the petty crimes of individuals for personal gain, but organised crime on a scale never even considered in humanity's past. Entire sub-sectors and planets have been in the thrall of illegal cartels and criminal organisations. There are even wayward Planetary Governorswho shun the Imperium and treat the dominion as their own paltry fiefdom, claiming the planet's natural resources, labour and riches for their own. In these dire situations it falls to the Adeptus Arbites to defend the Imperium's rights and prevent whole sub-sectors going rogue for generations, or even permanently. The Adeptus Arbites is not a galactic police force; it has little interest in petty crimes such as theft, murder or tax evasion, for these fall under the responsibility of the local planetary forces. The Adeptus Arbites is there to keep order on a far greater scale, to root out corruption, maintain the Imperial tithe and to guard against witchery.

From the Adeptus Arbites come the fearsome Arbitrators. Also sometimes incorrectly known as Judges amongst the general populace of the Imperium (this term actually refers to a specific Arbites rank), these men and women are stoic in their duty and unquestionably loyal to the Imperium. Inquisitors often go to the Adeptes Arbites when in need of a trustworthy Acolyte who is trained to think on their feet, combat-hardened and beyond reproach in their faith. Arbitrators are infamous for their prodigious stamina and zeal, and their ability to survive all manner of wounds and punishment in the quest to catch their quarry. Arbitrators are resolute and fearless. They demand utter obedience from the citizens they come into contact with. Where civil unrest and crime threaten the stability of a world, the Arbitrators are in the field: unflinching, ordering the local enforcers, and hunting down the rabble-rousers to restore law and order.

The Judges' methods are varied, not unlike the way Inquisitors go about their work. The means used can be different depending on their mentors, what Schola Progenium the individual attended and other such factors. However, unlike Inquisitors who have their own private agendas, all members of the Adeptes Arbites have the same goal and responsibility - to uphold the Emperor's justice. Some Arbitrators openly investigate and make no secret who their quarry is, even if he is of noble birth or high rank. This can often lead to overt hostility between the Judge and his subject, although there is no question who off-world forces of the Imperium would side with should they be requested to attend. This is by no means the only mode of investigation; other officers of the Adeptes Arbites are quite methodical in their approach, meticulously sourcing evidence and questioning contacts and witnesses.

The relationship between the Inquisition and the Adeptes Arbites is often one of the more cordial within the Adeptus Terra. Arbitrators often see working with Inquisitors as a way of further enforcing justice. However, such arrangements have not always worked so well. It has been known for Judges to turn on the Inquisitors they have been seconded to serve if they perceive the Inquisitor to have broken sacrosanct Imperial laws. This means Inquisitors of the more Radical factions must be wary when recruiting members of the Adeptus Arbites to become their Acolytes.

Notable Arbites Actions**Pavonis (Unknown Date.M41)** - During the workers' riots on Pavonis, the entire Adeptus Arbites force stationed at the Planetary Governor's palace was destroyed (save one who had been tasked by Inquisitor Ario Barzano with the personal protection of the governor), but only after holding out for several hours and fighting a rearguard action in the secret palace tunnels. They succeeded in destroying Pavonis' largest weaponry and munitions cache, denying its supplies to the traitorous planetary defense force legions.**Ichar IV (ca.992.M41)** - During the beginning of Hive Fleet Kraken's approach, rioting began to consume planets near the southeastern fringe of the Imperium. Inquisitor Agmar investigated these strange riots for signs of treasonous thoughts or heretical influence. On Ichar IV, a religious fundamentalist group called the Brotherhood was the cause of the rioting. Although they preached a faith like that of the Imperial Cult, they refused to obey Imperial commands or pay their tithe. Soon after this act of defiance they started instigating riots among the masses. While trying to break up one such riot, the Arbitrators of the planet were quickly surrounded by what seemed to be mobs organized from the complete population of the planet. When the localPlanetary Defence Force Regiment was called to help, it was quickly made apparent that they, too, had sided with the rebel mobs. After the assassination of the Planetary Governor, the Brotherhood established itself as the sole controlling force on Ichar IV. Inquisitor Agmar arrived on Ichar a few weeks after the outbreak of rebellion and on the same day that the Arbites precinct fortress in the capital, Lomas, was finally overrun. The Arbitrators were not defeated and most of their number escaped along a secret tunnel and captured the city's four main power generators. Inquisitor Agmar led assaults on the capital, but he was unable to rescue the Arbitrators who were overrun just six days after his arrival. With their final act, they destroyed the city's power generators. Because of the destruction of the city's power grid, the Ultramarines (who arrived just 39 days later) were able to retake the planet. It was later revealed that the Brotherhood was controlled byGenestealers.Role

While every advanced Imperial planet has its own local planetary police forces colloquially known as Enforcers and its own local laws, the Arbites are responsible for enforcing the broader laws of the Imperium, the _Lex Imperia_, ensuring Imperial Planetary Governors do not plot against Imperial rule, and that all Imperial laws and decrees are followed. The enforcement of a planet's local laws is not the concern of the Adeptus Arbites. These are left to the local law enforcement agencies. The Adeptus Arbites also serves to keep Planetary Governors in check; if an Imperial governor decides to skip his tithes for a year or ignore requests for troops from an embattled neighbour or the Administratum itself, one glance at the armoured fortress-precinct house of the Adeptus Arbites is usually more than enough to make him reconsider.

Duties and Powers

Although the Adepta's headquarters is the Hall of Judgement onTerra, the Arbitrators are stationed on almost every advanced Imperial world in fortified fortress-precincts. Arbitrators are recruited from the Adeptus Ministorum's Schola Progenium facilities (theEcclesiarchy's schools for the orphans of Imperial servants who have given their lives in the Emperor's service) across the Imperium.

In the event of a planet-wide collapse of Imperial control, the Arbites can decree martial law and take control until a suitable command can be established, generally under an Imperial Guard force. Even in circumstances that are not as extreme, Arbitrators have legal power over most of the people in the Imperium. They are authorized to arrest, interrogate, and execute Planetary, Sub-Sector, or even Sector Governors should the occasion warrant it, and can do the same to officers of the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy(although custom dictates that they must seek permission from theCommissariat, the organisation responsible for military law in the Imperial Guard). Only the very highest-ranking individuals and Imperial institutions are above the dictates of Imperial Law (the Imperial Inquisition, the Adeptus Astartes, the Navis Nobilite, etc), something that reflects powerfully on the mutual awe and terror in which the Arbitrators are held across the galaxy.

Commanded by the Grand Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites, who is one of the High Lords of Terra, the Arbites maintains an uncompromising attitude towards crime and hands out harsh sentences for violations, including summary execution, helping to make its officers in their dreaded black uniforms into symbols of fear across the Imperium. The Arbites is, for all intents and purposes, the practical militant arm of the Adeptus Terra. It presents a united legal front across the galaxy - it is concerned only with citizens following Imperial Law, and remains separate from enforcing local (planetary) laws. Arbitrators go to great lengths to remain aloof and separate from the populations they police, often only appearing to patrol and drag some poor unfortunate back to their terrifying fortress-precincts.

Precinct Fortresses

The Arbitrators operate out of massive Precinct Fortresses, located within capital cities in close proximity to thePlanetary Governor of major Imperial worlds. Sprawling hive cities may also have their own Courthouse Precinct to aid in large scale monitoring. Remote planets of little importance may have just a single fortified Precinct House for the single Arbitrator stationed there. Whatever their number on a world, or relative size and importance, every Precinct Fortress is broadly similar. They are severe, utilitarian buildings with black armoured walls as thick as a military bunker. Their towering shapes exude an air of menace, frowning down on the other buildings nearby and the citizens who hurry fearfully past. Though each Precinct varies based on the needs of the world it is built on, many include the same basic elements: billets for the Arbitrators, an extensive armoury to ensure they are well-equipped for the job at hand, secure cells in which to detain suspects ready for questioning or trial, and a court of judgement where guilt and punishment is determined.

These resources can vary greatly, as a Precinct with only a single Arbitrator may have limited ability to hold the guilty until the time of their punishment, and summary execution may be the Arbitrator's only viable course of action. Monitoring arrays allow the users to listen in on local communications and heavy calibre automated weapon turrets track passing vehicles. Larger precincts may contain additional facilities at the discretion of the High Marshal or Judge such as specialised interrogation rooms fitted out with all manner of devices for extracting information from those who find themselves strapped to the table, _medicae_ centres containing automated equipment and Surgeon-Servitors to treat the wounds of injured agents, and Astropathica shrines where pleas for aid can be transmitted to other planets and incoming messages painstakingly decoded.

Planetary Governors often resent the Imperial oversight represented by the Precinct Fortresses on their world. However, in the event of widespread civil unrest and rebellion, they can provide sanctuary from the raging mobs and form the base from which the uprising will be crushed. In the case of a hostile invasion, the Arbites may well be the only ones with the means to send for Imperial reinforcements, and their armoured fortresses often become a rallying point and central hub of the resistance. Assistance rarely arrives quickly enough to save the population, but behind their thick walls and heavy doors, it is the Arbitrators' duty to hold out for as long as possible, until the last scrap of food is gone and the last round of ammunition has been fired.

Imperial Law

Unlike the members of the Inquisition, the Arbitrators (also sometimes called Arbiters) of the Adeptus Arbites are unable to freely judge or sentence other Imperial citizens at-will. The only mandate an Arbitrator is sworn to uphold and enforce to the letter, is formally known as the _Dictates Imperialis_, the laws of the Imperium as set by the Adeptus Terra; local laws are not the Arbitrators' concern, nor do they fall under their jurisdiction, and those are left to be enforced by local law enforcement agencies. Likewise, they owe no allegiance to any local Imperial Commander or Planetary Governor and are themselves above any local law. The _Lex Imperialis_ is a collection of laws, rules, precedents, and other legal protocols collected from the decrees of the Emperor of Mankind in ancient times and the High Lords of Terra over the last ten millennia. An Arbitrator could spend decades researching and studying the law for one case. The Imperial law that the Arbites enforce is thousands of Terran years old and, in some cases, is potentially irrational and oppressive. It could be as much a crime to be kidnapped under certain circumstances as it is to kidnap an individual. Any crime which concerns the Arbites is already severe, and the usual punishment is death, either through immediate execution or the delayed death sentence of conscription into a Penal Legion of the Imperial Guard. The common Imperial citizen has no legal right to a trial beyond the judgment of an Arbitrator once the Arbites are called in to deal with a crime. Other punishments include public lashings, death by burning in the case of certain heresies. With the permission of the Ecclesiarchy, for crimes of heresy or crimes conducted by an Adeptus Ministorum priest who has abused his office, the sentence is usually that of Arco-flagellation.

The _Lex Imperialis_ and the _Book of Judgement_"_I can also correct you on a point of formal law. We are the Adeptus Arbites. The vessel by which the Emperor's laws have travelled down the ages. We light and keep the beacon of the Emperor's Law so that all His Imperium can guide their lives by it, and we see to it that those who turn away from that beacon and cause themselves and others to stumble are made to pay. We determine the guilty, we decide the punishment. I have witnessed judgments of officers of the Navy and of the Imperial Guard and of planetary and system governors. I have twice helped to pass sentence on men and women of both those organizations, some of them more highly ranked than you, gate-captain._"— Attributed to Arbitor Senioris Calpurnia

The _Lex Imperialis_, the code of Imperial law, is written down in the _Book of Judgement_ kept by the Adeptus Arbites. The _Book of Judgement_ has been painstakingly collected, annotated and collated over millennia and embodies every decree ever passed by the Emperor Himself or the High Lords of Terra. In fact, the _Book of Judgement_ has long-since grown beyond the confines of a single tome, no matter how large, and comprises countless records, books, and legal decrees. The most ancient articles are written on crumbling parchments, enscribed in unknown human tongues by the nameless functionaries of a forgotten age. However, every day new volumes of parchment, data-records, and encoded holoscript are added to the _Book of Judgement_, and interred within the reinforced confines of the Hall of Judgement on Terra. Shelves of tomes rise hundreds of metres towards the vaulted ceilings above canyons of marble and iron. Over the ages, the Hall has been expanded and extended many times, so that it is now an entire complex covering many acres, with miles of corridors, levels, and rooms. Scholars, scribes, and law lords pace the time-worn marble floors, while above their heads, on the narrow gantries and ladders that cover the shelf stacks like a spider's web, crawl legal assistants and low-ranking functionaries, searching through the detritus of judgement for weeks and months at a time to find just a single reference.

Sectors ruled by the Imperium follow the precepts of the _Lex Imperialis_ and the _Book of Judgement_. Over the centuries, of course, the interpretation of the _Lex Imperialis_ by various Sector Lords and Judges became more and more bloated and unwieldy from numerous additions, amendments, exceptions, and clauses, the result of interpreting Imperial law to the needs of specific locales. There exists a veritable army of thousands of clerks, litigants, and barristers toiling away on a sector's capital world just to interpret its ever evolving decrees and dicta. Indeed, the most astute Rogue Traders, trade houses, and merchant interests keep their own teams of legal scholars in their employ, both to keep them abreast of the current state of law in a given sector where they do business as well as to give them protection and guidance should they become embroiled in legal proceedings. Rogue Traders often send one of their cargo vessels to a sector's capital world once a decade to obtain the most up-to-date records of the _Lex Imperialis_ as interpreted by that sector's law.

Every Adeptus Arbites Judge, at some point in his career, attempts a pilgrimage to the Hall of Judgement on Terra, there to study the full intricacies of Imperial law. Many spend long years there, for the most heinous, subtle, or far-reaching crimes often require a lengthy process of research to pass judgement. While the _Dictates Imperialis_ are extensive, the huge volume of prior cases and sometimes contradictory rulings can make it difficult to determine the correct decision. In especially complex cases, it may take centuries to reach an outcome - a Judge may spend his entire life deliberating, scrutinising, and trying to fathom out the issues, only to pass his work on, unfinished, for others to continue. Millennia later, though the accused are long dead, a ruling is finally made and justice must be meted out upon the distant descendants and those obscurely associated with the original transgressor.

The _Lex Imperialis_ and the Calixis Sector

The codified _Lex Imperialis_ is a labyrinth of laws and ordinances that govern the Imperium's scattered worlds. Imperial law is, for the most part, brutal and unyielding, yet understanding every nuance of its breadth and scope is an impossible task. In addition, the _Lex Imperialis_ can be interpreted with a myriad of minute differences across the galaxy, which are as many as the innumerable different human cultures that comprise the Imperium itself. More importantly, the _Lex Imperialis_ does not deal with the laws of specific planets. Instead, it deals with the rule of the Imperium: in other words, the Imperial Tithe and the legal workings of the Imperium as a whole, the law codes that bind the human-settled galaxy together within a single, if feudal, interstellar government.

Within the Calixis Sector, the Adeptus Arbites and other Imperial agents tend towards a fairly "average" interpretation of the _Lex Imperialis_, if such an interpretation can be said to exist. Of course, even then each Judge and Arbitrator has their own interpretation of the finer points of Imperial law, and each one's view of the _Lex Imperialis_is different.

The _Corpus Presidium Calixis_

While the mighty _Dictates Imperialis_ contains the writ of the Emperor's holy word, the rulings of the High Lords of Terra, and the enumerable precedents and judgements of the great and the just among the Adeptus Arbites themselves, it is not the whole of the law. Indeed, it is far from it. The _Corpus Presidium Calixis_ is the name given to the collected laws, enshrined rights, and traditions of the Calixis Sector itself. It holds sway over the lives of billions, forming the bedrock of the Lord Sector's rule. Much of it is a reiteration (or interpretation) of the tenets of the holy_Dictates Imperialis_ and other strictures laid down in the ordinances of the Segmentum Obscurus of which Calixis is a part. However, a great part of the _Dictates_ is individual and unique to the Calixis Sector.

Of this latter portion, much was writ during the Angevin Crusade and its aftermath, either by Lord-Militant Golgenna Angevin himself, his advisors, and most importantly, by the hand of Saint Drusus. These documents do much to enshrine the rule of law in the sector and establish the power and strength of the nobility, the rights of the great houses and the laws of dynastic succession, and to lay down the strictures in which the Combine Commercia, the corporations and commercial houses of the sector, operate. These ancient laws, given under a Warmaster's authority and ratified by an Imperial Saint, have a provenance and weight that is difficult to overturn or ignore. Even the Adepta and the Ordos Calixis of the Inquisition must consider their import carefully before acting against them.

Investigations

In special cases, Arbitrators may be granted a considerable degree of independence and latitude in pursuing transgressors of the law. This may take them away from their regular duties for extended periods and even necessitate travel off-planet, if that is where the trail leads. It is hardly surprising then, if their inquiries bring them to the notice of an Inquisitor, who may request their ongoing services as an Acolyte. This is usually a harmonious relationship, as both are implacable servants of the Imperium and are dedicated to rooting out those that would see it fall, and many Inquisitors count Arbitrators among their most trusted servants. Of course, Inquisitors are invested with completely discretionary powers to determine a course of action and punishment, in stark contrast to the iron dictates of the law that the Arbitrators must follow.

Any bending of the rules or leniency granted to wrongdoers by the Inquisition in return for information and favours may well cause friction. As such, members of the Adeptus Arbites are better suited as the Acolytes of PuritanInquisitors. It is not unheard of for Arbitrator Acolytes to turn upon Radical Inquisitors if they perceive an unforgivable law has been broken. The sponsorship of an Inquisitor can provide a considerable boost to the career of an Arbitrator. The word of a senior member of the Ordos goes a long way to improving the chances of an Arbitrator in being elevated to the high rank of Judge. Of course, the Inquisitor will then expect the Judge to serve him as well as the Arbites, gaining by extension the Judge's sweeping power and Imperial authority at a level few other Inquisitorial agents possess. In fact, given a Judge's great standing and responsibility, his relationship with an Inquisitor is often something close to an equal partnership. Facing such a combination, the enemies of the Imperium will surely fall.

Law in Dispute

The Adeptus Arbites are the chief enforcers of the Emperor's law. On the countless worlds of the Imperium, it is the steel gauntlet of the Arbites that ensures the inviolable law of the Emperor is followed. It is the Arbitrators who stand ready to enforce the law of the Imperium over the regulations and concerns of planetary rulers, and it is the Arbitrators who are the first line of defence against rebellion and anarchy. They are the rigid, unbreakable order of the Imperium personified. Yet just as rust can creep into the cracks of the toughest armour, so discord can fester in these protectors of Imperial rule. The written law of the great _Book of Judgement_, or the _Dictates Imperialis_ as it is more properly known, is unforgiving, but neither is it simple nor brief. The law of the Imperium is vast and considered divine, yet it is not so great in size that it covers every eventuality. In such cases where the law fails to give clear guidance, a case must be judged in line with any precedence set by previous judgements. Between the vagaries of interpretation and the weight of precedence fall many disputes and contradictions, some of which even an Arbites Judge cannot reconcile. Thus, an unbending approach to the Emperor's law can lend authority to the indiscriminate killer as easy as it can the guardian of order, and a judgement once made can create licence for all manner of actions normally beyond consideration until a greater judgement contradicts it.

Quality of Judgement

The Judges of the Adeptus Arbites are mighty lords, clad in the raiment and traditions of a long past age. They wield the absolute and unforgiving law of the Imperium with brutal and unyielding exaction, for it is given to them to stand guard against the treachery of those beneath them and the excesses and ambitions of those in power. Not least of all this includes the Lords Commander and their agents who directly govern the Imperium's many worlds. Each judge may command his own armed forces of Arbitrators and may call upon the other resources of the Imperium if he requires it. Trusting no one and nothing but the letter of the law, they are able to hold almost all within the Imperium to account. The power of the senior Judges and High Marshals of the Adeptus Arbites is almost equal to that of the Inquisition - except they are bound entirely by the hierarchy of the Imperium and cannot step beyond the measure of the _Dictates Imperialis_.

Given such power and responsibility, it is possible for the judgement of these men and women to stray and for them to find themselves following a path of conflict with other agencies of the Imperium. So it is that instances of heresy and strife relating to the Adeptus Arbites most often have their root in the Judges. While they may be inflexible in the execution of their duties, and unflinching in their authority, there are some threats against which neither the word of the law nor strength of arms offer any defence.

Crime of Abstraction

Although extremely rare, abstractionism is considered by some to be the oldest sin those empowered to enforce Imperial law may commit. For all of the wisdom accumulated by venerable Judges, the shadow of abstraction clings to their office like a leech. Abstractionism is a term applied to a condition of criminal deviancy in Arbitrators who come to see the letter of the law inadequate to the task of executing their duties in an expedient manner. Instead, they come to rely on summary judgement over evidence and due process. The worst stray into vigilantism, meeting out punishment and death for perceived or even potential crimes rather than real ones. This creed is considered a vile heresy, a breaking of the Arbites oath, and a crime punishable by death if discovered.

Of course, those who do fall into this heresy, feel they are on the side of the righteous and that their own sense of the law and moral imperative are a guide to truth and judgement in an uncaring universe. In the worst of cases, such as the long-suppressed Cerpicia Precinct incident on the world of Hredrin, unauthorised and unmarked Arbites Kill-teams were sent to execute criminals at the behest of an illegal "star chamber" of judgement. Venerable Marshals used their subordinates to assassinate members of other Imperial agencies who they felt "must" be Heretics. In such rare and dangerous cases, the slide from persecuting the enemies of the Imperium to becoming one can be a swift journey indeed. Tragically it is often the most intelligent, faithful, and dedicated among the Judges and Marshals that fall to the sin of abstractionism in their desire to do the Emperor's work. They doom themselves to a Traitor's death if they are discovered by their fellow Arbitrators, and worse should the Ordo Hereticus claim them.

Disputes of Jurisdiction

Conflict between the Adeptus Arbites and other Imperial agencies most commonly occurs because of disputes over which of them has authority to enforce Imperial law, and which law applies in a given case. Many Judges see the letter of Imperial law not only as absolutely unbending, but also without boundary or limitation. It has been known for zealous Arbitrators to seize and execute agents of the Ministorum because they have executed Heretics without recourse to the law, or bullishly intervene on the discovery of some cult or secret agency only to later discover that they have jeopardised a covert Inquisitorial investigation. To some foolish or fanatic Judges, such distinctions as the sanctity of a Navigator's ancient privileges or an Imperial noble's rights and title are subservient to the requirements of the law. To them, the greater weight of the law outweighs other considerations in any and all cases.

Most often such activities are reined in by the Arbitrator's high command before conflict can turn to violence or even open warfare. On rare occasions, a senior Marshal or Judge (knowing full well the risks of doing so), might start a secret investigation against an agency whose immunity from the law he cannot accept. Whether he is right or wrong in his suspicions, bloodshed is the often inevitable result.

Enforcer Cadres

Many worlds have their own cadres of Enforcers, local law enforcement agencies provided by the Imperial Commander to enforce their will and the common law of their world. Unlike the mighty Arbitrators, most Enforcers hold little loyalty to the law itself or to the tradition of service (although there are notable exceptions to this). Instead they function as the iron hand of the Planetary Governor's rule at best, and are at worst little more than hired thugs with some degree of official sanction - loyal only to their paymaster and eminently venial and corruptible.

Within the Calixis Sector, the role and nature of Enforcer cadres vary widely. Perhaps the most well organised and numerous force is the Magistratum of Scintilla, a paramilitary force that serves as the direct agency of the office of the Lord Governor. The Magistratum numbers tens of thousands of armed men and women, nearly as well resourced as the Adeptus Arbites. At the other end of the scale, worlds such as Luggnum, whose communities are scattered across numerous mining camps and shanty towns, make do with Regulators and Rail Agents to maintain order and dispense rough justice. Many of these are little better than bandits and extortionists themselves.

Some worlds, either through culture or simple lack of technology, do without Enforcer cadres at all, the ruling classes and their private armies being in sole charge. Although this arrangement is most common on Feudal andFeral Worlds, it is not exclusive to them, and indeed Malfi, a sub-sector capital and a Hive World second only toScintilla, is largely governed and civil order maintained by the armsmen of its Great Houses. Its small Enforcer cadres are little more than over-armed door wardens and palace guards. In most cases, the Adeptus Arbites and the Inquisition view Enforcer cadres with some suspicion, if not outright distrust, often with good reason.

Adepta Organisation

The overall leader of the Adeptus Arbites is the Grand Provost Marshal, who represents the Arbitrators on the Senatorum Imperialisas one of the High Lords of Terra. Below the Grand Provost Marshal are the senior Arbites officers known as the Marshals of the Court who oversee sector-spanning administrative jurisdictions that are called Precincts. Below the Marshals of the Court, the Arbites are internally divided into two primary divisions; the Judges, who deal with actual legal matters and the application of ten thousand Terran years of Imperial law to criminal and civil cases, and Arbitrators, the paramilitary law enforcement arm of the Arbites who perform the work necessary to apprehend and punish those who break the dictates of the _Lex Imperia_.

Arbitrators and Judges operate in parallel organisations within the Adeptus Arbites, though the two separate organisations joining at the highest ranks when senior Judges and Arbitrators are raised to become Marshals of the Court. Senior Arbites fulfill both roles, with Judges getting their hands dirty apprehending criminals in the field, and Arbitrators learning to preside over lengthy court trials.

There are numerous ranks and roles within each of the Arbites divisions, such as the squads of Verispex technicians who provide forensic evidence drawn from a crime scene to the Judges and Arbitrators, the Chaplains who provide the spiritual sustenance of the Imperial Cult to the Arbitrators and the Chasteners who are experts in the psychological and physical interrogation of prisoners.

For their part, the Arbitrators are divided into many different functional roles, each trained and equipped accordingly. Patrol Groups of Arbitrators prowl the dangerous Underhives of hive cities, Shock Troops break up the vicious queue wars which often develop outside Imperial government buildings belonging to the bureaucrats of the Administratum, Execution Teams hound the guilty through barren wastes and labyrinthine tunnels, and Snatch Squads apprehend targets for interrogation by the Chasteners. Other kinds of Arbitrators include cyber-warfare specialists who apprehend cyber-criminals through the Cogitator matrices of the Administratum and specialists who carry out more long-term investigations who are known as Arbitrator Detectives. Senior Arbitrators are often awarded the rank of Proctor and placed in command of the different types of Arbitrator squad.

Arbites installations are maintained on almost every Imperial world and are known as precinct courthouses. Each precinct courthouse includes an armoured installation that serves as an armoury, training ground, barracks, prison and judgment hall. In order to remain fully aloof and separate from the populations they patrol, Precincts are as close to fully-enclosed and fortified cities as they can be, and include dungeons, barracks, firing ranges, scriptories, archives, warehouses, kitchens, gymnasia and garages. They include all possible resources that the Arbitrators require - including their own Astropath facilities and access to orbital docks. These courthouses are intended to be self-sufficient and to support a complete Arbites army and they are equipped as such.

Amongst the most highly trained and disciplined individuals in the Imperium, Arbitrators may find themselves commissioned to join the retinue of an Inquisitor as an Inquisitorial Acolyte. The Arbites has strong ties with theOrdo Hereticus, and the two can often be found working towards common goals. Arbitrators in these retinues are often known as "Enforcers", having been released from their single-world jurisdiction, and free to punish law-breakers wherever they may be.

Recruitment and Promotion

Arbitrators are recruited from exceptional members of the Schola Progenium from all over the Imperium. This organisation fosters the orphaned children of high-ranking Imperial servants (whether they are scholars, scribes, or soldiers) and grooms them for their own life of dedicated service. Those chosen for service in the Adeptus Arbites are selected for a variety of reasons. Such candidates could be those who dominated their fellow progenia though force of will, or those who show an attention to detail and an analytical mind. Ultimately, any candidate must be exceptional if they are to serve within the Adeptus Arbites. It is ensured that new Arbitrators have no ties or connections whatsoever to the world on which they are to be stationed, so there is no weakness for blackmail or coercion to exploit - Arbitrators are famously incorruptible.

Though the term "Arbitrator," is often used to indicate the members of the Adeptus Arbites as a whole, there are in fact many ranks within a given sector that may be bestowed upon such individuals. These titles are selected for each world or sub-sector to instil fear in the local culture. In a sector rife with heresy (such as the Calixis Sector) it is crucial that an Adeptus Arbites officer is instantly obeyed. Therefore, a Lord Marshal might allow individual precincts to title their officers as they best see fit, and these titles often deviate greatly from precinct to precinct. Furthermore, specialists found within a sector often find their titles altered, even from one locale to another.

Once trained and deployed on-world, the lowest ranks are most commonly seen patrolling the streets in small squads, discouraging trouble by their menacing presence. This is especially true in many of the hive cities of a highly populated Hive World, which serve as a proving and burial ground for many fledgling Arbitrators. Those novice Arbitrators who prove themselves may be promoted to the ranks of Investigator, a title chosen to strike fear into the nobles of an Imperial world, who have many secrets. Some may show themselves to be highly capable in the field, even in high pressure, life-threatening situations, and be tasked with guiding field operations. Others are tireless at rooting out evidence and leads, as well as having an excellent command of Imperial law and how to apply it, and they may be promoted to even higher ranks.

Many Lord Marshals value skill, tenacity, and faith, and to that end, higher and more specialised appointments are awarded to those officers with exceptional talents in particular areas. Those who truly excel in the detection of crime may become the ultimate spymasters, tacticians, and forensic experts. No wrongdoer is too well-hidden to escape their notice or evade their cunningly laid traps. Those who specialise in trial and prosecution, who boast an encyclopaedic knowledge of the _Lex Imperialis_ and a gift for oratory and incisive accusation, may be tasked with presiding over glorious show-trials and passing judgement upon those great individuals who have failed in their duties to the Emperor.

Arbitrators whose particular skills lie in the application of extreme brutality and military force or the command of men in battle, and who have proven time and again that they are nigh impossible to kill, may be promoted to the level of Proctor or Marshal. Proctors derive their name from ancient military traditions in the underhive of Gunmetal city, a term that carries with it an air of divine justice. They specialise in crushing riots and insurrection in the most hostile of districts deep within a hive city's steel and iron caverns. Arbites High Marshals are the commanders who control the deployment of resources across the precincts of an entire planet or even multiple planetary systems. They serve at the direct appointment of the Lord Marshal, and there is no higher Imperial legal authority on a planet, unless an Inquisitor decides to "open a dialogue" on the subject. It is they who bear the heavy burden of allocating men and equipment, trusting to their own judgement and the Emperor's will that their forces will be in the right place at the right time. A few remarkable individuals may, after a long and illustrious career, be elevated to the rank of Judge. Judges are iron-willed lords of justice, who have far-reaching powers, an extraordinary mandate, and influence not far below that of an Inquisitor. They investigate and sit in judgement over those who commit the most heinous crimes, and will go to any lengths to pursue and capture or destroy a perpetrator.

All Arbitrators of high rank will readily deliver their sentence personally, through the barrel of a gun, and have the power to deploy the uncompromising force of the Arbitrators when it is necessary. Should the need arise, perhaps if an entire planet has fallen to civil unrest, they even have the influence to request, and receive, the full might of theImperial Guard to restore the Pax Imperialis (though in such cases, the population of the planet is often substantially reduced). It should be noted that while the Adeptus Arbites enforce galaxy-wide Imperial law, every world and star system will have its own laws, inherited through tradition or imposed by autocratic ruling families and severe Planetary Governors. Each world's rulers will maintain their own policing force, recruited locally, and often outnumbering the Arbitrators a thousand to one - these local law enforcement officers are commonly known in Imperial jargon simply as Enforcers, though they are each called by their own title on each world they serve. These native Enforcers often mimic the Arbites in appearance, but their local ties and often less rigorous standards mean that they are far more susceptible to corruption. The objectives of local Enforcers and Imperial Arbitrators often overlap, and the two work in conjunction when it is mutually beneficial. However, there are also occasions when they come into direct conflict.

In practice, the Arbitrators are tasked to punish criminal activity, root out cultists and illegal gatherings, eliminate organised gangs, and are often unleashed _en masse_ to quell riots. They must be as willing to dispense justice as they are to pronounce it. Often the punishment will be a swift bullet to the brain (or the perpetrator will have expired during the process of apprehension and interrogation). Other sentences, amongst the hundreds of thousands available in Imperial law, include flogging, limb amputation, exile to a prison world, condemnation to a Penal Legion, public execution, or conversion into a Servitor. Arbitrators have the power to commandeer local enforcers and other resources such as ground vehicles or air transportation, the services of freelance bounty hunters if their own manpower is lacking, and in dire circumstances can summon Imperial military assistance. Their authority supersedes even that of the local Planetary Governor, who will be closely scrutinized if there is any suspicion that his duties are not being undertaken with all due diligence.

If the governor is late in the payment of tithes, is less than thorough in enforcing the population's proper worship of the God-Emperor, or is tempted to decline sending troops to the aid of an embattled neighbour, the Arbites will be watching. In times of crisis and conflict, it is possible that a Planetary Governor may be assassinated, deposed, incapacitated, or even implicated in one of the Arbites' investigations. If this should happen, then the highest-ranking member of the Adeptus Arbites available on the world has the authority to temporarily take over rulership of the world, until a suitable replacement can be put in place. This duty generally falls to an Arbitrator with the rank of Judge or Marshal, but where an isolated world has only a token Imperial presence, even the lowest ranked Arbitrators have, on rare occasion, stepped in to fill the breach.

Arbitrator Ranks**Grand Provost Marshal** - The Grand Provost Marshal is the leader of the Adeptus Arbites and sets its overall policy from the Hall of Judgement on Terra. The Grand Provost Marshal also is considered a High Lord of Terraand sits on the Senatorum Imperialis, the collective ruling body of the Imperium.**Lord Marshal** - As the Imperium is mighty so too is the Lord Marshal. His will is not blunted by the petty whims of circumstance. The cold rule of law is his only measure, and woe betide those that fall short. A Lord Marshal commands the Arbites presence of an entire Imperial sector.**Justicar** - The Justicar is a senior and highly decorated Marshal who brings the light of the Emperor's judgement to decadent nobles, corrupt officials of the Adeptus Terra and local planetary administrations and worlds brought low by dark worship. Justicars are rare individuals within the Arbities hierarchy, but where they can be found they normally command the Arbites presence on an entire Imperial world or across several star systems. Justicars are powerful officials within the Arbites hierarchy who may be tasked by their Lord Marshal or even the Grand Provost Marshal himself with troubleshooting duties spanning an entire sector or even several regions of the Imperium where the Emperor's justice has dimmed.**Marshal** - A high administrative rank, comparable to a Magistrate but with increased seniority, Marshals take the rule of law to the darkest dens of scum and depravity, dispensing Imperial justice in a bright arc of muzzle flare. Marshals normally command the Arbites presence on an entire Imperial world or even several star systems.**Magistrate** - A Magistrate is a senior and highly experienced Judge who rules upon intricate cases of heresy and sedition. By dispensing death, they keep the soul of the Imperium alive. Magistrates hear and decide the most difficult of cases to come before the Arbites.**Judge** - A Judge is a senior Arbitrator whose experience and knowledge of the law has given him the right to hear the more difficult cases that come before the Arbites and to command his fellow Arbitrators in the field and in the precinct House. Judges are often the highest-ranking Arbitrator in a given Precinct if there is more than one Arbites Precinct on a world. Judges often work closely with the Arbites' Chasteners and pronounce sentences over any prisoners held within their Precinct courthouse, though any Arbitrator also has the authority to proclaim sentences and execute those sentences in the field. Most Judges deal with crimes of a more high-profile nature or where the correct sentence under Imperial law is unclear to the arresting Arbitrator. Most Judges were originally Arbitrators themselves who were promoted upwards in the organisation.**Proctor** - A lateral rank, comparable to an Intelligencer, Proctors lead Adeptes Arbites riot squads and suppression forces against highly armed, and highly foolish, criminals.**Intelligencer** - Intelligencers are those Arbitrators who serve as the Arbites' spymasters, tacticians and forensic experts. Their powerful intellect is matched only by their dedication to the Imperium.**Investigator** - Investigators are skilled and experienced Arbitrators who learn the arts of inquiry, using contacts, charm and dirty tactics to uncover the truth. Investigators are usually veteran Arbitrators who are the Imperial equivalent of real world police detectives.**Arbitrator** - Arbitrators are guardians of order and the rule of law within the Imperium. Implacable, unrelenting, and nigh-on impossible to kill; they are the Emperor's justice manifest. They are the most common rank of Arbitrator an ordinary Imperial citizen will come into contact with, usually to his or her misfortune if they have broken the law.**Regulator** - Regulators take the law to the underworld, holding their own against any who challenge the Emperor's law.**Enforcer** - An Enforcer is taught how to keep order in the most desperate situations, standing shoulder to shoulder with his fellow Arbitrators.**Trooper** - The most junior rank within the Adeptus Arbites hierarchy, a Trooper is drilled in combat and his duties to the Imperium. He is stout of heart and eager to enforce the Emperor's law.Arbitrator Squads

A standard Arbites Patrol Group or Squad will either consist of five, ten, fifteen or twenty Arbitrators, led by a squad leader (included in the number of the squad, and usually called a "Proctor") and armed with Shotguns, Suppression Shields and Power Mauls, as well as an array of grenades (Frag, Krak, Smoke, Blind, and several other types, depending on the situation). Arbitrators are trained to intermingle with other squads in the event of casualties, meaning that even if one squad loses several members, it can easily disperse to fill the gaps in nearby units, or fall back for reinforcements and resupply before plunging back into the fighting once more.

Traditionally, larger squads of fifteen to twenty Arbitrators are only used in extended combat actions; where greater numbers are needed for tougher jobs such as storming a gatehouse or defending a vital area. In serious attacks, Shock Troop Squads (Arbitrators trained in paramilitary techniques to break enemy positions), organised into units of ten, will lead the way. Although these grim-faced men and women are equipped in exactly the same way as the standard Arbites Patrol Squads (albeit with larger grenade and ammunition stores, since they cannot be expected to fall back and restock as frequently as their more mundane counterparts) they probably receive extra training, as they are considered the elite troops of an Arbites Precinct, similar to real-world SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams.

Accordingly, both the Adeptus Arbites and many local Enforcer cadres have need of hardened men and women whose talent lies in dealing death and summary execution rather than upholding the law or maintaining order. These troopers make up the infamous Kill Squads under the direct jurisdiction of the local Imperial Commander and are used to guarantee their power; they also form the feared Arbites Castigation Detachments tasked to deliver the Emperor's wrath on the recidivist and those who would contravene high Imperial law without fear or favour.

Other Arbites Specialists**Arbitrator Detectives** - Arbitrator Detectives spend the most time in the field of any of the Arbites, usually under deep cover as they seek to root out particularly egregious criminal conspiracies or even heretical taint. A rare few Detectives may be psykers.**Chasteners** - A Chastener is a specialised Arbites agent found in the Calixian Precincts. The task of theChastener is to interrogate prisoners in the Arbites Precinct House by any means they see as necessary, including mental and physical torture. Treatment at the hands of these men and women usually ends in death, although a death in which one is absolved of one's sins against the God-Emperor, provided one confesses.**Chaplains** - The Chaplains of the Arbites are the spiritual overseers of the Adeptus Arbites who are also considered members of the Ecclesiarchy as well as the Arbites, like other clergy of the Imperial Cult. A number of Chaplains are always to be found in Arbites installations.**Cyber-Mastiff Handler** - Cyber-Mastiffs are the sniffer dogs of the Adeptus Arbites. These animals form their own squads, consisting of a paired Cyber-Mastiff and its handler, but there are no specifics as to how many pairs form a squad. Cyber-Mastiffs are often employed to sniff out any hostiles that might have hidden themselves in the wake of an Arbites advance, but are still fully capable of defending themselves and their handlers. They are controlled by verbal commands from whoever is paired up with them, and are keyed to their owners' voices/smells to prevent enemies from giving them counter-acting commands. Cyber-Mastiffs can be biological animals or purely mechanical creations, though many are actually normal canines who have received some form of cybernetic upgrade from the Adeptus Mechanicus.**Enforcers** - Arbitrators are not, typically, concerned with everyday crimes, such as murder or theft. These are the purview of the colloquially named Enforcers (known locally by as many names are there are planets in the Imperium). These native Enforcers often mimic the Arbites in appearance, but their local ties and often less rigorous standards mean that they are far more susceptible to corruption. The objectives of local Enforcers and Imperial Arbitrators often overlap, and the two work in conjunction when it is mutually beneficial. However, there are also occasions when they come into direct conflict. While the effort put into maintaining this justice varies greatly between one planet and another, the individual Planetary Governors are charged with keeping the peace. The justice (or lack thereof) on a planet falls to the Enforcers of that planet's law, who may find themselves working under the Arbitrators during an investigation, or indeed being trained by them. Of course, these lines occasionally blur. When powerful men and women, such as Ecclesiarchical leaders, Inquisitors, or even Rogue Traders, pull strings or demand the services of particularly skilled Arbitrators or Enforcers, the distinction can become hazy or non-existent.**Mortiurge** - A Mortiurge is an Arbitrator that takes on the role of a sanctioned killer rather than a servant of the law, but their presence within the Adeptus Arbites is considered by most a necessary evil. These specialised agents stand out from the ranks of the cold-blooded killers of the feared Arbites Castigation Detachments due to their particular skill and callous dedication to their lethal duty. These individuals are specially trained to operate independently both as snipers and close-quarter gunfighters. A Mortiurge operates alone, singled out from his fellows by his differences in purpose and the blood on his hands. In truth little more than judicially-recognised assassins, Mortiurges are often also employed to keep other law-enforcers in check when the need arises. As such, these singular killers are often shunned by their colleagues and quickly learn to keep their distance, lest one day they be called on to slaughter a friend and ally.**Suffering Marshal** - An Arbitrator rank found only on the harsh and brutal world of Iocanthos, a Suffering Marshal is a stalwart and resourceful agent of the Arbites assigned to track down skilled fugitives who flee to Iocanthos to escape Imperial law. These lone operatives must remain resolute in their duties, whose dedication to the Imperium and its laws drive them on, alone, for as long as it takes to catch those who would jeopardise the planet's chief export of Ghostfire, a crop used to make combat drugs. Suffering Marshals are given a great deal of personal discretion in so far as how they go about their duties, a necessity of their work, but one that many more traditional Arbites consider to be dangerous. While each Marshal is called upon sooner or later to track down specific fugitives and deliver righteous punishment, it is also their duty to know intimately the frontiers in which these criminals will eventually try to hide. They are free to travel the planet, with massive banners to signal their position and to the locals. Called "Flags" by many, local settlements and tribes will flock to the Marshal for judgement in tribal affairs. In this way, these solitary agents of the Adeptus Arbites become experts on the customs, environments, and populations of dozens of frontier outposts and locales, and are adept at learning new mores and cultures quickly.**Verispex Adept** - A Verispex Adept is an agent of the Adeptus Arbites on the world of Scintilla, trained by theInquisition in a variety of detection arts. It is the Verispex who uses his own immense knowledge, both learned and implanted, to follow the minute traces of physical evidence left by even the most careful suspect who has transgressed Imperial law. Due to the extreme investment the Adeptus Arbites and Ordos of the Inquisition must make in order to train a single Verispex, these scholarly agents are highly valued and often kept far from the front line of Imperial law-keeping. This is, however, not always a possibility. Whenever a Verispex Adept is sent into the field, they are accompanied by an Inquisitor or Judge's most capable retainers. Arbites Verispex Squads are the Imperium's equivalent to real world police forensic crime scene investigation teams.Wargear

The closest real life equivalent of the Adeptus Arbites - disregarding the Arbitrator's right in Imperial law to suspend _habeas corpus_ and serve as judge, jury and executioner - is an American police SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) team or a national paramilitary force such as the Spanish GEO or French GIGN, and their equipment reflects this homage. Often operating in dense urban environments, Arbites are equipped with Combat Shotguns and Bolters with Executioner rounds; this is a type of special ammunition with homing capabilities. They are also generally armed with Shock Mauls for melee combat, Electro-Net launchers and pulse-charged bolas for capturing perpetrators alive, grapplehooks and stingers, and escorted by cybernetically-enhanced Cyber-Mastiffs for hunting hidden lawbreakers. For protection, Arbitrators wear black Carapace Armour with their signature jaw-exposing helmets. Arbites make use of Combat Bikes for patrols and Repressor armoured personnel carriers, a variant of the Space Marines' Rhino, for riot response and patrols in violent urban areas, as well as heavier tanks such as theLeman Russ in true combat situations such as a rebellion or uprising. However, in such extreme circumstances the Arbitrators are almost always required to call in true Imperial military forces like the Imperial Guard or the Space Marines.

Commonly utilised wargear for the Adeptus Arbites includes the following:

Shock Mauls

Ultima-Pattern Arbites Maul

Added by Algrim Whitefang

Shock Weapons are designed to be generally non-lethal, assaulting the victim with incapacitating force through electrical shocks released on impact. As Shock Weapons have little or no destructive impact on flesh other than minor electrical burn marks, they are useful for crowd control and "encouraging" workers such as shipboard press gangs or other forced labour. A Shock Maul (or Power Maul) resembles a club surrounded in an electrical energy field which disrupts the surface of solid matter. The depth of the field can be adjusted to bash a hole through a wall or merely administer an irresistible knock-out blow to subdue a victim. Common variants utilised by Adeptus Arbites include:

**Agni Pattern Power Maul** - A relatively small and inexpensively manufactured model of Power Maul, this weapon is weighted towards the hilt, and as such is regarded by some Power Weapon connoisseurs as somewhat graceless. It is common in "second line" precincts (as they are locally known) where trouble is not particularly expected, or among vehicle crews who value its handy proportions. Like all true Power Mauls, it has energy settings which can be adjusted to the circumstances.**Cyclopea Pattern Power Maul** - A huge and intimidating two-handed weapon unique to the Calixis Sector, this Power Maul contains a monstrously overcharged disruption field which actively shatters the bonds between the molecules contained within items it strikes. Resembling a feudal mace, this maul has only one power setting: maximal. Potent enough to crush groundcars or send shattered opponents flying dozens of feet with a single stroke, this weapon is reserved for the most intense riots. It is designed to awe and terrorise the enemies of the Adeptus Arbites, and to send entire mobs cowering before the user.**Lathe Pattern Power Maul** - A light, slender, and elegant model of Power Maul, this unusual weapon (crafted only on demand in the Calixis Sector) has a spiked handguard and a long, straight, un-weighted haft. It must be handled more like a sword than a club, which some users find frustrating, and critics have labelled the weapon fussy and difficult to master. However, the Arbitrators manning the Precinct Fortresses of theLathe Worlds find that the slender profile is highly effective in the dense corridors of the manufactoria. Those who take the time to familiarise themselves with the pattern's idiosyncrasies declare it one of the finest examples of a Power Maul ever made. The apparent fragility of the design is misleading, and the versatile power field is more than capable of inflicting the same damage against opponents as models with a more brutal heft.**Ultima Pattern Arbites Power Maul** - This pattern of Power Maul is a versatile, one-handed weapon with two power settings. At its low setting, the maul's head delivers an electrical shock powerful enough to stun (and sometimes kill) its targets, just like a regular Shock Maul. At the high setting however, the energy forms a crackling power field that can sunder steel, armour, and flesh. The Power Maul of the **Adeptus Arbites** is as much a symbol of Imperial authority as it is a weapon, and one that is seared into the minds of petty criminals and serious recidivists alike. While rank-and-file Arbitrators make do with simple Shock Mauls, veteran Proctors or the feared Judges prefer to wield the far more impressive Ultima Pattern Power Maul.Shotguns

The Shotgun is an ancient Imperial weapon, much the same as theHeavy Stubber, which fires solid slugs that burst into submunitions to spread out over a wider area. The Adeptus Arbites utilise the shotgun for crowd control and urban conditions and have developed special "Executioner" shells for them:

**Vox Legi-Pattern Arbites Combat Shotgun** - The primary weapon of the Adeptus Arbites is the Combat Shotgun. It is valued for its stopping power, simplicity, reliability, and for its ability to intimidate. Even the most dusty, ancient Judge haunting the Halls of Judgement on Terra will have cut his teeth on the brutally effective shotgun drills which form the foundation of all Arbites combat training. A large variety of different shotgun patterns are used in different Arbites Precinct Fortresses across the galaxy, depending upon the proximity of the localForge Worlds. The Vox Legi-Pattern is particularly widespread amongst the Arbitrators of the Periphery Sub-sector, and is broadly typical of the weapons favoured by the Arbitrators of the Calixis Sector. Effectively a large-bore, locally manufactured version of the Shotgun designs used by many planetary Enforcers, the Vox Legi is a devastating and adaptable weapon that fires shotgun shells nearly the size of those employed by theAdeptus Astartes. The increased size of the weapon reduces its ammunition capacity compared to that of other shotguns, but it still remains more powerful and adaptable than a standard shotgun. Most patrolling Arbitrators take advantage of this flexibility by carrying a variety of shotgun shell types so that they can employ different tactical options. Over-engineered by a considerable margin, the weapon is also perfectly capable of being used as a large club - indeed, it is expressly designed with this secondary purpose in mind. It is also designed for maximum psychological impact, with a very audible pump action (standard Arbites riot training makes use of this). The sound of a hundred Arbitrators simultaneously chambering their weapons has ended countless riots in a single instant over the millennia.**Executioner Shotgun Shells** - These rare and specialised shells (whose use is often limited to the upper echelons such as Judges and important Castigators and Mortiurges of the Adeptus Arbites) contain miniaturised propulsion and stabilisation systems allowing the shell to lock on and track its target. The mechanisms that achieve this are little understood and extremely hard to replicate, and so remain within the purview of those Magos-Munitorium that provide the Arbites with their sanctioned and ordained arms.Ranged Weapons

The Adeptus Arbites are a paramilitary force, and as such employ a vast variety of ranged weapons. The amount of military grade equipment they possess is infamous, and a constant warning to any rebellious Planetary Governor. The armouries of most hive city Precincts are capable of equipping an army ten times the size of the actual Arbites complement within their walls, or of sustaining a siege for months on end.

**Bulldog Heavy Stubber** - Although mistakenly regarded by many as a pure police force, it is far from unknown for the Arbites to engage in suppressing what are, in effect, full blown wars between opposing national, or even planetary, forces. As such, they have access to powerful heavy weapons to ensure that they are able to fulfil their divine mandate. The Arbites value reliability, tactical flexibility, and a menacing appearance in their weapons, and these qualities are expressed fully in the Bulldog Heavy Stubber. The Bulldog is regarded with great affection by its proponents, whom it has served faithfully since the time of theAngevin Crusade in the Calixis Sector. The weapon can be switched between belt or magazine feed easily, can accept a variety of exotic ammunition types without complaint, and can be carried at the hip in a gyro-mount or mounted on an Arbites Rhino.**Ius Automatic Pistol** - Normally used as a backup weapon alongside the Arbites shotgun, the Ius is ubiquitous amongst both the Calixian Arbites and planetary enforcers of Scintilla. This weapon is a solid and unspectacular yet utterly reliable Autopistol, crafted by the gunsmiths of Gunmetal City on the world ofScintilla, the capital of the Calixis Sector, to be as sturdy as possible. Typically issued to junior ranks within both organisations, this weapon is designed to be foolproof and to withstand punishment that would damage other firearms. Many of these humble weapons are thousands of standard years old, having served generations of lawmen and women in some of the toughest hive cities in the galaxy.**Raffir Ringleader Pistol** - Gifted to the Arbites as part of the planetary tithe by the Raffir clan manufactory smithmasters of Hive Subrique, these beautiful Autopistols are produced under licence using ancient Adeptus Mechanicus archprints. The pistols produced are huge, intimidating shock-and-terror weapons, designed for the execution of high profile targets at the height of anti-Imperial riots. These weapons are issued to senior Arbites officers, not so much for their accuracy or utility in a firefight, but for the damage they inflict on both the person of rabble rousers and on the morale of their followers.Armour**Adeptus Arbites Carapace Armour** - The appearance of the Adeptus Arbites strikes fear into the hearts of criminals and the lawless. The task of crafting the signature Carapace Armour of the Adeptus Arbites falls to a variety of worlds within various sectors of the galaxy. A given sector's Adeptus Arbites sees to the manufacturing of equipment for its Fortress Precincts on many different Forge Worlds, so that it would require a sector-wide revolt to jeopardise the supply lines. Arbitrator Carapace Armour is constructed from denseplasteel plates overlaying a synthetic polyplastic fibre weave that must be produced in an orbital null-gravity manufactorum. Arbites Carapace Armour is designed to be clipped together and worn over a light, breathable bodyglove, the armour carefully constructed and tailor-made to the proportions of the Arbitrator concerned. Given that the armour must be worn for hours at a time, often during periods of extreme physical exertion, it must be light and comfortable, and it succeeds surprisingly well on these fronts. The armour is completely unpowered, though it is often equipped with a number of mag-strips which permit weapons and other equipment to be attached directly to the armour without the need for clumsy straps and external clips. The Carapace Helm is equipped with a micro-bead (or "Vox-torc") and is open at the mouth to allow easier verbal communication. The helm is, however, capable of being hermetically sealed in seconds; and has mountings for a rebreather, which is usually magnetised to the belt when not in use. It also contains polarising lenses which react instantly to light over a certain lumen level, and which have the effect of negating photonic Flash Grenades completely. A beneficial side effect of this approach is that it makes it impossible to see which direction an Arbitrator is looking. The armoured gloves are cunningly wrought devices colloquially known as "lock gloves" in Low Gothic terminology, which count as Recoil Gloves. The armour has a number of magnetised attachment strips that are capable of carrying the Arbitrator's weapons and equipment. Typically, an Arbitrator in the field will be equipped with a holstered Ius automatic pistol, three clips of ammunition, a rebreather, a Vox-torc, a lamp pack that can be handheld or swiftly attached to any Arbites weapon, a Power Maul, two grenades (of any type), and two pairs of magnacles in addition to a basic weapon and ammunition. The armour has a very large mag-strip on the back which is capable of mounting a single basic weapon of up to 10 kilograms in weight.**Arbites Riot Armour** - The Arbites are often called to break up riots. Whatever the nature of the disturbance, whether it be a queue war involving disparate packs of petitioners outside Administratum scriptoria, or desperate food riots aimed at snatching resources from tithe shuttles, the Arbites will not falter before the mob. When facing large, ill-disciplined multitudes armed with cobblestones, planks, or staves, the Arbites will attach panels of protective cushioned wadding over parts of their Carapace Armour to protect against impact damage. These pads are often brightly coloured, and are designed not only to protect the Arbitrator, but to signal to rioters that they are about to be routed. Riot Armour is a simple, but encumbering, collection of cushioned pads that are attached to vulnerable parts of standard Arbitrator Carapace Armour when facing riots.**Judge Armour** - Judges have the authority to requisition whatever equipment is held within the armouries or Cold Vaults of their planet's Precincts, and as such will wear whatever they want in the field. Some pride themselves on wearing the same battered Carapace Armour they wore when patrolling decades before as a humble Arbitrator; however, most accept that their superior station as a lord of the Emperor's justice demands more spectacular and intimidating garb. Judges will typically wear the finest examples of Carapace Armour available, constructed by master artisans, together with antique flowing robes and elaborate headdresses from different periods of humanity's judicial history. A Judge's armour will vary from world to world, as he or she seeks to refine their appearance so that it causes the most awe and fear in an individual planetary population. Judge Armour is broadly similar to normal Arbites Carapace Armour in terms of its level of protection, but it incorporates theatrical and gaudy elements which suggest (in local historical terms) the power and majesty of the Arbites.**Hydraphur Pattern Judge's Carapace Armour** - The distinctive matte-black and red light Carapace Armour of the Arbites is as distinctive as it is intimidating, and the armour of an Arbites Judge is only more so. The armour of a Judge is designed to reflect his authority as the _Lex Imperialis_ made manifest, and to sow terror in the criminal and malcontent. It shares the same basic pattern as Arbites Carapace Armour, but incorporates a storm coat and helm topped with a massive golden eagle. Judge's Carapace Armour has a helmet equipped with an integral encrypted micro-bead, good quality photo-visor (granting him Dark Sight and allowing him to ignore photonic Flash Grenades), and a Vox-amplifier (allowing the user to amplify his voice to near-deafening levels). A small stab-light can also be attached to the shoulder plates. These systems are powered by a small Charge Pack (equivalent in size and cost to a Lasgun Charge Pack) that must be replaced after a week of continuous use.Suppression Shield**Hydraphur Pattern Suppression Shield** - Suppression Shields are common equipment for the Adeptus Arbites, although upon seeing their effectiveness, many other organisations and individuals have moved to obtain them. The Suppression Shield is both a bulwark and a weapon, a heavy slab of ceramite large enough for the wielder to take cover behind. Each has a built-in arc-lumin at the top, and a powerful shock-plate in the shield's centre. If the wielder strikes with the shield, he can discharge the shock-plate on impact, delivering a powerful electrical blow. Suppression Shields have the Recharge quality, since the shock-plate takes time to build to dangerous levels. It can still be used as a weapon while it is still recharging. Arbites Suppression Shields are also designed with lockgrips on the upper corners. Crusader Suppression Shields are designed for combating the malefic and Warp-spawned powers, and are inscribed with hexagrammic wards.**Synford Pattern "Lockshield"** - The Arbites commonly make use of heavy ceramite shields during operations of all types. These are rectangular plates, worn on one arm, which are typically equipped with a heavily armoured viewport that offers protection to the operator. The Synford "Lockshield" is a relatively standard example of the type, but with one unusual and defining feature. The Lockshield, like most Arbites shields, is designed with an armourglass viewport and a firing port through which a basic or pistol weapon can be fired without penalty. It also contains a powered Vox-hailer linked to the Vox-torc of the most senior Arbitrator present, allowing that officer to rebuke and remonstrate over even the most deafening racket. It contains mag-strips on both sides, which enable prisoners to be secured directly to the shield by magnacles. Its most unusual feature is its ability to lock solidly with adjacent Lockshields to create an armoured wall behind which Arbitrators can advance as a unit, thus giving the shield its common name. The shield can be locked using mag-strips to shields adjacent to it; the Arbites use this to create walled "Lockshield" formations during particularly lethal riots, or to advance large groups of Arbites down wide, fire-swept corridors.Adeptus Arbites Titles and Uniforms in the Calixis Sector

Lord Marshal Luthir Veremonn Goreman of the Calixis Sector allows his Precincts to give titles that strike fear and awe into the local population. This practice allows a certain flexibility when interrogating suspects and determining duties. It is quite possible that no two agents in a Precinct have exactly the same title. Each Judge uses this freedom as he sees fit, some creating convenient ranks to identify specialisations, and others treating them almost as nicknames, easy monikers for identifying who is capable of a task.

In an effort to make it easy for each Arbitrator to identify the role of their colleagues from other precincts, Goreman has instituted a system of armbands, sashes, and collars. A red collar, for instance, shows that an Arbitrator has been trained and proven capable of detailed investigations. Sashes are also used, so that an individual may be identified as having more than one area of expertise, such as the brown sash of the Chastener. Finally, a thin armband may be worn on an Arbitrator's upper arm, to signify further specialised skills and experience.

Servitors

The Arbites will, on occasion, make use of Servitors, but generally not to the same extent as other branches of the Adeptus Terra. The Arbites pride themselves on being a disciplined and self-reliant force, and there is an unspoken belief in many Precinct Fortresses that excessive reliance upon Servitors fosters a spirit of dependence far removed from the proper, spartan ethic of the organisation. Despite this, some Servitors do serve to the best of their limited abilities within the Arbites, typically performing duties which can free Arbitrators to carry out their law enforcement roles. For example, emplaced Gun Servitors are used extensively within Precincts for sentry duty, and a handful of other heavily modified designs are used for other more specialist roles. The Arbites also have in their service cyber-constructs such as Cyber-Mastiffs, cyborgs that incorporate the instincts of animals. Both canids and avians are employed for this purpose. Such animals are usually crafted in special Adeptus Mechanicus facilities, such as Hive Subrique, which provides the vast majority of such constructs for the Calixian Arbites.

Notable Arbitrators**Lord Marshal Luthir Veremonn Goreman** - Arbiter Luthir Veremonn Goreman is the Lord Marshal of the Calixian Great Precinct, located in the Calixis Sector on the sector capital world of Scintilla. Born into a family of butchers and flesh-thieves upon the world of Sinophia, he came into contact with a wandering Confessorwho had once been a former Enforcer from Scintilla who had left her post following a religious awakening. Listening to her holy words, Luthir's soul was stirred to zealous conviction in the benevolent Emperor. Of all the expressions of the God-Emperor's will that she was able to teach him, her experience as an Enforcer was the one that resonated with him the most. Departing his world, he struck out on his own and became a part of the local enforcement militia of the Horst-Kosada hive city. Following a cull of these Enforcers due to corruption by the local Arbites, he went from being a suspect to being a recruit during his interrogation. His reputation was cemented over many long, dedicated standard years of service. His iron will, the force of his personality, and the constant, simmering anger that sometimes blunted his undeniable charisma marked him for Arbites command. Goreman's vigour for his job is not born out of a positive inspiration to bring order but by his smouldering hatred of those who disrupt it. It was his idea to create the Divisio Immoralis, a new Arbitrator taskforce intended to deal with the myriad threats now confronting the sector. Goreman is known to have little respect for the vast majority of citizens who comprise the Calixis Sector's populace. Every time Goreman looks out upon the mass of Imperial citizenry he sees exactly the same thing he remembered from his homeworld of Sinophia: dissipated, lazy, disobedient wastrels slouching through aimless and worthless lives. To him, the Imperial Adeptus Terra is the only worthy creation of human society, to serve in it the one worthy ambition. The Adeptus, under the guidance of the Immortal Emperor, shows the rest of humanity what they could be had they the discipline, the faith, and the strength. Those outside the Adeptus are contemptible, and should think themselves lucky they are allowed to toil to support it; those who disobey or disrespect the Adeptus, or even court ambitions outside it, are beneath contempt. Luthir Goreman is of average height and lean of build, which surprises people who have seen the portraits and statues portraying him as a muscular giant. His complexion is pale, his eyes and hair grey, and his features broad, stern and handsome. He wears a black and gold Arbitrator dress uniform for most of his duties, with his rank pins and medals arranged on a separate banner that is carried to formal occasions by an adjutant. He always has a small purity seal pinned to his left lapel, copying a verse of Imperial scripture onto a new parchment each morning and having a garrison preacher bless and attach the seal at his private morning prayers.**Kae Drusil** - Senior Arbitrator Kae Drusil is Marshal-in-Chief of the Divisio Immoralis within the Calixis Sector. She was recruited into the Arbites following the assassination of her Great-Aunt and the rest of her noble household at the Universitariate she was attending at the age of fifteen. She remembered the Universitariate Enforcers and the interrogation by an unknown Judge. The Judge, whose name she never learned (and never sought), saw Kae's faith in the law, and her anger. He believed that these two traits would make her a fine recruit for the Arbites, and he was correct. As far as Kae Drusil could tell, the interrogation was her recruitment examination. Her belief in the incorruptibility of the Arbites and the inevitability of a future rule of perfect law had been demolished beyond repair by the things she was forced to do during a mission that was conducted under the auspices of the Inquisition. Approached by Lord Marshal Goreman, Drusil agreed to command the Divisio Immoralis, the Lord Marshal's new experiment in Imperial law enforcement.**Naxander Durantis** - A man with nearly two decades of experience in the Calixis Sector, Arbitrator Primus Durantis is the commander of the voidship _Intervention_, a unique "Castigator" patrol cruiser. Now in his late fifties (and with limited access to rejuvenat drugs), Durantis views his rank with a mixture of honour and resentment, eager to bring justice to the stars but also struggling with the fact that he can no longer so readily lead his men in combat as he did earlier in his career. Unwilling to let all his old duties fall away in place of newer ones, Durantis still interrogates many suspects personally, his scarred visage serving to intimidate the weaker-willed of his captives. He is a shrewd interrogator, having learned a great deal working alongside many skilled Chasteners over the years, and his eye for detail is sharper than ever.**Citro Envedine** - Judge Envendine is an ambitious and politically astute agent of the Calixian Arbites. The Precinct Astra is the brainchild of Judge Envendine as a means of prosecuting the habitual lawbreaking of several Rogue Trader Houses around the Calixian entrance to the Koronus Passage into the Koronus Expanse. He bought two salvaged voidships that had been pried from a Space Hulk's embrace. Utilising these two vessels, the Calixian Judges were able to prosecute the Emperor's laws, bringing Renegade members of Rogue Trader houses and pirates to justice.**Orrik Von Darnus** - Orrik Von Darnus was a very senior Judge of the Calixis Sector almost a millennia ago, and had turned to intellectual pursuits late in his career, devoting nearly a century to research and analysis of the Pax Imperialis and how it is implemented in the Calixis Sector. Though he wrote many books and treatises, his seminal work in the late 40th Millennium was _The Promise of the Pax Imperialis_, a volume so large that a printed copy requires two cargo-hauler Servitors to move. Later scholars argue whether Von Darnus wrote _The Promise_ in an attempt to simplify the application of Imperial law in the Calixis Sector, or simply because the old man derived far too much pleasure worrying away at thorny issues of legal precedent. Von Darnus's primary arguments focused on the idea that the Calixian Arbites' attentions should focus on crimes of sedition, treason, and actions that undermined the Adeptus Terra, while leaving most "lesser" crimes to a planet's local Enforcers. He went on to say that as isolated as the sector was from the rest of the Imperium, such crimes posed the greatest threat to Imperial rule, and should be prosecuted aggressively. Even now, a thousand standard years later, many senior Calixian Arbitrators regard Von Darnus's writings as something of an authority on the implementation of Imperial law. Currently, Lord Marshal Goreman's opinions cemented the high regard with which many Calixian Arbites hold Von Darnus's works. The Lord Marshal has a habit of quoting _The Promise of the Pax Imperialis_ when pronouncing rulings, and is said to keep a near-complete collection of Von Darnus' books in his personal offices on Scintilla.**Jeremiah Pavo** - Judge Pavo gained his place among the Adeptus Arbites after revealing a plot to corrupt fellow members of his Schola Progenium on Avellorn. After containing the Bureau of Standard Measures Queue Wars and detaining over 10,000 participants, he was asked to join the retinue of Inquisitor Tannenburg of the Ordo Hereticus. He has proven to be a valuable asset to the Inquisition and an example of the skill and determination of all Arbitrators.**Captain Virgil Ortega** - Wielding a Shock Maul and Combat Shotgun, Captain Virgil Ortega commanded the Adeptus Arbites on the planet of Pavonis during a time of great riots and disorder against the Planetary Governor and her cartel. When the situation led to the arrival of a company of Ultramarines and an Inquisitor's investigation, the Planetary Defence Force openly attacked the capital city, starting with the bombing of the precinct house. Ortega led his fellow Judges into battle, charging from the ruins into the city square, in front of a statue of the Emperor himself. The battle that followed was the stuff of legend, the few and faithful fighting against those who would betray the Emperor, however the sheer number of tanks and soldiers of the traitor Planetary Defence Force legions slowly began to whittle away at the Arbites' numbers. Holding his few remaining men together, Captain Ortega slowly fell back to the weapons cache located beneath the Precinct house. They were able to hold back their pursuers for a while there, having an almost limitless supply of heavy weapons and ammunition, but when it became apparent that they were fighting a losing battle, Captain Ortega and his loyal Arbites came to the decision that the precious store of weapons and ammunition could not fall into the hands of the enemy. Fighting back waves of planetary defense force troops, Captain Ortega and his remaining Arbites wired and readied all of the explosives in the cache. They came very close to failure as their position was nearly overrun, but with his remaining Judge, Sergeant Collix, covering his advance, he ran into enemy fire and as his life slipped away he detonated the munitions, dying with the rest of his men.**Sergeant Collix **- Collix served on Pavonis fresh from the academy until the day of his death. When Pavonis could not produce tithe taxes to the Imperium, a force of Ultramarines led by Uriel Ventris traveled to the planet, accompanied by a young adept by the name of Ario Barzano, who in turn was actually a high ranking Inquisitor investigating heresy and the presence of Necrons on the world. The planet's separate factions rebelled against the governor and the Arbites, striking hard in the city square and the Arbites Precinct house. Some two hundred Judges survived the initial attack, and fought the renegade Planetary Defence Force troopers in a bloody battle. Together with his comrades, Sergeant Collix held a weapons cache and defended it to the last man. Never yielding in his faith, though mortally wounded, Sergeant Collix continued firing a Heavy Stubber into charging masses of traitors and heretics as he lay dying, buying time for Captain Ortega to detonate the munitions stores, leveling the cache, along with the entire renegade force in the city.**Judge Jenna Sharben** - Jenna Sharben served alongside Captain Virgil Ortega and Sergeant Collix on Pavonis. She was kidnapped along with the planetary governor and an Inquisitor. She was the only member of the Adeptus Arbites team on Pavonis to survive after the rebellion. She was later killed in a Tau invasion of Pavonis.**Marshal Primus Jamahl Byzantane** - Marshal Primus Jamahl Byzantane was a long-serving Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites who was assigned to service on the world of Belatis shortly before the start of the Gothic Warin the early 41st Millennium. Byzantane fought a losing battle for the control of Belatis with already present and active Chaos Cult cells, and ultimately had to abandon the planet altogether when it became the next target of Abaddon the Despoiler's Planet Killer.**Shira Lucina Calpurnia** - An Arbites Senioris, Shira Calpurnia was born on the world of Iax in the Realms ofUltramar. Shira's family, the Calpurnii, are one of the oldest and most prominent of Iax, and like many such families in Ultramar, has an illustrious pedigree and long history of service to the Imperium; there have been other Arbitrators within her family, as well as senior commanders of the Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy, and at least two Battle-Brothers that served in the Ultramarines Space Marine Chapter, including a 1st Company Veteran who died during the Battle of Macragge fighting against the Tyranids. After being recruited into the Adeptus Arbites, Shira trained on Machiun. Her career then took her to postings across the Ultima Segmentum including; Drade-73, MG-Dyel, Hazhim, Don-Croix and Epheada before reaching the rank of Arbiter Senioris and being posted to the world of Hydraphur in the Segmentum Pacificus. 


	15. Chapter 15

Adeptus Ministorum

Race

Mankind

Headquarters

Ecclesiarchal Palace(Terra)

Government

Imperium of Man

Leader

Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum

Military Forces

Orders Militant of theAdeptus Sororitas,Frateris Militia, Frateris Templar (Disbanded)

Establishment

32nd Millennium

The **Adeptus Ministorum**, more commonly known as the **Ecclesiarchy**, is the official state church of the Imperium of Man, which maintains and promotes the worship of the Emperor of Mankind as the one, true God of Humanity. It is a massive organisation that guides the worship of billions of people on numberless worlds and across great divides of distance, language, and culture. The core of the Ecclesiarchy's spiritual and temporal power is the Cult Imperialis, also known variously as the Imperial Creed or Imperial Cult. The foundation of the Cult Imperialis is the belief in and worship of the Emperor as a divine being, the power of the Emperor to intercede in matters spiritual and temporal, the power of prayer to bring about a change in circumstances, and the divine right of Mankind to rule the stars. The Adeptus Ministorum also administers and spreads the Imperial Cult throughout the territory of the Imperium.

Though any Imperial religious cult or sect must ultimately adhere to the core theology of the Imperial Creed, the possibility for conflicting interpretation means that in practice the Cult Imperialis is an agglomeration of many differing schools of thought. Whilst agreeing in essence, cults and sects across the galaxy often differ on particular tenets of belief or modes of worship. To many the Emperor is a God of War, to others a saviour and bringer of light, and to some a stern judge of the dead. Inevitably, simple differences of emphasis of faith can become points of hostility and even the cause of bloodshed. Many merciless and savage wars have resulted time and again over such fine points of theological doctrine. Although the interpretation of particular dogmas of the Imperial Creed varies across the many worlds of the Imperium, any extreme deviance from its strictures and theology is considered heresy and dealt with with great severity by the Ecclesiarchy or, in extreme cases, the Ordo Hereticus of the ImperialInquisition.

The Cult Mechanicus, whilst actually a very different religion from the Imperial Cult, is tolerated by the Ecclesiarchy under the terms of the ancientTreaty of Mars which allowed the Tech-priests of the Red Planet to maintain their faith in the face of the atheistic Imperial Truth. After the Imperium was transformed into essentially a theocracy in the early 32nd Millennium, the Adeptus Mechanicus agreed to a theological compromise with the Ecclesiarchy which saw the Emperor as the Omnissiah or physical embodiment of their Machine God. However, rampant distrust between the adherents of both Imperial faiths continues to simmer just beneath the surface and the Ecclesiarchy and the Mechanicus often view each other as political rivals. The Adeptus Ministorum is based on Terra, its urbanEcclesiarchal Palace covering nearly all of the southernmost continent of Antarctica.

During the Great Crusade, many different religious cults, drawing on the book written by the Primarch Lorgar known as the _Lectitio Divinitatus_ that first proclaimed that the Emperor of Mankind was actually the incarnate God of Humanity, first appeared throughout the Imperium of Man, though each had its own subtle variations and differences in basic theology. These forms of worship appeared first on those primitive planets of the Imperium that had regressed technologically during the long, terror-filled years of the Age of Strife. The number of these cults multiplied exponentially following the Emperor's ultimate sacrifice to save Mankind from the rule of theWarmaster Horus and the Dark Gods at the end of the Horus Heresy and his subsequent internment within the Golden Throne. This event was hailed by believers as the Emperor's "ascension" back to full divinity within the Immaterium. Most of these cults would gradually fade away, while others prospered, eventually absorbing the weaker ones. The more successful Emperor-worship cults spread their forms of worship to other planets.

The strongest of all the early Imperial cults of the _Lectitio Divinitatus_was called the Temple of the Savior Emperor. This cult had the advantage over the others in that it was based on Terra and that its leader had been a successful and respected officer of the Imperial Army who had fought at the Siege of the Imperial Palace, defending the heart of the Imperium in its darkest hour. This holy man had re-named himself Fatidicus and had begun to preach his teachings concerning the divinity of the Emperor to anyone who would listen. This faith spread among the members of the reformed Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy who had seen first hand the horrors of Chaos, but also to lowly scribes and minor Adepts of the Adeptus Terra (the Administratum). The faith was then spread by these individuals to other planets. When Fatidicus died at the age of 120 standard Terran years, the Temple had more than a billion followers on Terra and untold faithful throughout the Imperium's Segmentum Solar.

In the wake of the chaos and anarchy of the Horus Heresy, the Temple of the Savior Emperor provided a message of hope and reunification through a common faith. Cults who rejected being absorbed, or who couldn't be absorbed, saw themselves being persecuted by fanatical mobs who preferred the Savior Emperor's increasingly "orthodox" theology. Officially, the Temple rejected this violence performed in its name. This development culminated in the 32nd Millennium by which time almost two-thirds of the Imperium's population followed the teachings of the Temple of the Savior Emperor, the exceptions being the Space Marines, who have never formally acknowledged the divinity of the Emperor in a nod to his wishes and the lost Imperial Truth and the Adeptus Mechanicus of Mars, who had their own form of worship in the Cult Mechanicus. The Temple's importance, influence, and power rapidly outmatched that of any other _Lectitio Divinitatus_ cult dedicated to Emperor-worship.

In the early 32nd Millennium, in recognition of its unprecedented political power over the minds of Men, the Temple of the Savior Emperor was officially recognized by the High Lords of Terra as the state religion of the Imperium of Man. It also became an official Adepta of the Imperium's government as the Adeptus Ministorum. A few centuries later, the Ecclesiarch Veneris II received a seat on theSenatorum Imperialis and joined the ranks of the High Lords of Terra, and after 300 years, this seat was made permanent. The power of the Ecclesiarchy continued to grow, increasing its hold over the minds and beliefs of the Imperial citizenry. Those who wouldn't follow its teachings were declared unbelievers, ostracized, and on occasion even executed. The vast territories of the Imperium were organised into different dioceses led by the Ecclesiarchy'sCardinals. These powerful religious and political figures were responsible for the hordes of Imperial Missionaries and Preachers that were released to tend to the spiritual needs of the faithful on hundreds of worlds. Lavish shrines, impressive temples, and majestic cathedrals dedicated to the God-Emperor of Mankind were built throughout the Imperium. Millions of religious pilgrims soon began making their way across the galaxy to visit particularly important religious locations, such as the world where a particular Imperial Saint had performed their most famous miracle. In time, the sheer number of pilgrims who arrived on certain worlds became an economic activity in ad of itself for the Ecclesiarchy and entire planets were dedicated to worship and directly ruled by the Adeptus Ministorum as Shrine Worlds. Particularly important Shrine Worlds might become the religious seat of an entire diocese stretching across a Sub-sector or Sector and so a Cardinal would take up residence there. These planets became known as Cardinal Worlds.

The Confederation of Light

The only threat to the Ecclesiarchy's spiritual and political dominance in the Imperium was the Confederation of Light. Based upon the planet Dimmamar, this penitent faith's ideals of poverty and humble living clearly contradicted the teachings of the Ecclesiarchy, whose view was that sacrifices of wealth and money to the Adeptus Ministorum in taxes, tithes and other gifts were necessary to enhance the citizens of the Imperium's access to salvation and ensure that the Emperor's light reached every corner of the galaxy through his Missions. The Confederation proved too difficult for Ministorum agents to infiltrate, and the Ecclesiarchy turned to violence, supported in this effort by the unanimous vote of the High Lords of Terra, who declared the onset of the first War of Faith, largely to ensure that Imperial political stability was not damaged by the emergence of religious plurality and possible religious violence. The entire Confederation was declared heretical and the forces of the Imperial Guard, the Imperial Navy, and thousands of fanatical zealots from the Frateris Militia were unleashed upon it, bent on its destruction. Only a few cells and hidden shrines of the Confederation managed to survive and the power of the Ecclesiarchy over the minds of men, for better or worse, was made unassailable.

By the end of the 33rd Millennium every civilised Imperial world was furnished with its own cathedral and the coffers of the Ecclesiarchy were filled with the offerings and tithes from the teeming billions of the God-Emperor's faithful. This wealth was squandered in building increasing numbers of larger and more lavish cathedrals and to fund more Wars of Faith intended not to save the souls of humanity but to secure the Ecclesiarchy's political power and wealth.

Age of ApostasyReign of Blood

The Age of Apostasy in the 36th Millennium was one of the most destabilising periods in Imperial history after theHorus Heresy, beginning during the long struggle between the Ecclesiarchy and the Administratum for ultimate political power over the Imperium. The High Lord Goge Vandire, the 361st Master of the Administratum, was a power-hungry tyrant who eventually gained direct control over the Ecclesiarchy as well as the Administratum by usurping the position of the Ecclesiarch. This made him the single most powerful individual in the Imperium since the Great Crusade, and allowed him to place his own rule above that of the Emperor. His time in power became known as theReign of Blood, consisting of massive purges of the Ecclesiarchy, and the killings and assassinations of countless perceived Traitors, Heretics and conspirators. This period was eventually ended by the Ecclesiarch Sebastian Thor's reborn Confederation of Light, a sect of the Imperial Cult based on the previous Confederation of Light's banned teachings that sought to end Goge Vandire's corruption of Imperial theology. The end of the Reign of Blood resulted in a major reformation of the Ecclesiarchy, the creation of the Imperial Inquisition's Ordo Hereticus to police those enemies of the Imperium who lay within its own structures and the creation of the Adepta Sororitas to serve as both the Eccelsiarchy's new military forces and the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Hereticus.

The Plague of Unbelief

The Plague of Unbelief is considered to be a part of the Age of Apostasy by Imperial historians, although it occurred several decades after Sebastian Thor's ascension to the position of Ecclesiarch. The main perpetrator of the Plague of Unbelief was the traitorous Apostate Cardinal Bucharis, who for a time controlled vast swathes of the Imperium under his heretical rule until he was finally brought to the Emperor's justice by the Space Wolves Space Marinesand a betrayal by his own enraged people.

Conflicts of Faith

The Imperium of Man is pervaded and dominated by religious faith. It is unsurprising that the Ecclesiarchy often bristles at the presumption of other Imperial organisations, taking easy offence to slights to its position and pride. As many in the Adeptus Ministorum see themselves as the keepers of the faith that unites humanity, they often stray into the presumption of a divine right of authority that extends further than that of other Imperial organisations. Chief amongst those who come into open and occasionally bloody conflict with the Ministorum's more fanatical members are the Tech-priests of Mars, and more rarely the Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes, most of whom deny the divinity of the Emperor, preferring to uphold the original, more secular traditions of the Imperium. The openly deviant faith of both these organisations has nagged at the suspicions of the pious for millennia. Some in their pride and zeal feel that it is their right and duty to see the faith of these bodies brought into line and bound to the authority of the Ministorum. Often the result is disastrous, as both the Astartes and the Mechanicus are fiercely independent and wield great powers of their own. More subtly, the Ministorum constantly flexes its secular influence over other branches of the Adeptus Terra to varying degrees. Certainly in the past, certain cardinals and prelates have gone so far as to use blackmail, assassination, and even full-blown civil conflict to enact what they consider the Emperor's holy design. However, any who would see the return to domination of an all-powerful cult must also fear the Ordo Hereticus and its answer to such hubris and presumption.

Heresy is not simply a matter of mutation, witchery, and trafficking with Warp powers. More subtly, it can be a matter of the specifics of faith and worship. The Cult Imperialis is broad in its accommodation of differing tones of faith. However, on the fringe lurk numerous sects and groups who flirt with heresy and deviate from the Imperial Creed to such a degree that their faith is no longer sanctified. The worst cases are declared as abomination by the Ministorum's authorities. The boundary between sanctified faith and heresy is thin, and many sects cross it simply because the ruling centre of the Ecclesiarchy shifts and leaves them suddenly no longer accommodated within the theology of the Cult Imperialis. Countless times over the past ten millennia the Ministorum has gone to war with a part of itself over a point of dogma.

The Ecclesiarchy is not officially part of the Adeptus Terra, but is organised as a wholly separate Imperial Adepta. At its head is the leader of the Imperial Cult, the Ecclesiarch, who, by tradition since the 32nd Millennium, is always one of the Imperium's ruling High Lords of Terra. Below him are the Cardinals, of which there are several thousand, each of whom oversees the Ecclesiarchy's operations and properties in a diocese comprising a Sector, Sub-sector or even a single world of Imperial space. Below the Cardinals are the Pontifices, Confessors, Missionaries and Preachers, in that order, respectively. The clerical orders of the Ecclesiarchy are open to men and women alike, though men seem to have an advantage in achieving high position because many believe that as men, they are closer to the perfection of the God-Emperor, whose perfect embodied form was that of a perfect human male.

The Adeptus Ministorum's own governing body is the Holy Synod, a conclave composed of the Ecclesiarchy's most powerful Arch-Cardinals and Cardinals. The Ministorum divides the Imperium's territory across the galaxy into thousands of dioceses, each generally encompassing an entire Imperial world - the exception being Terra, the heart of the Imperium, which possesses several dioceses because of its sheer population size and political importance. Some dioceses can encompass several worlds or even an entire Sector in the case of the officials granted the extremely powerful rank of Cardinal-Astra. A diocese is further divided into parishes centered around a shrine or church. Each diocese is headed by a Cardinal, while each parish is headed by an Imperial priest with the title of Preacher. Ranking between these individuals are priests known as Pontifices whose authority extends over several parishes to serve as administrative go-betweens in large dioceses between Preachers and their ruling Cardinal. Priests known as Missionaries have no administrative duties within a single diocese but can be deployed to spread the faith of the Imperial Cult to newly rediscovered human-settled worlds. They are always part of the Ecclesiarchy's missionary wing that is called the Missionaria Galaxia.

Confessors are evangelical zealots who possess a rank within the Ecclesiarchy somewhere between Preacher and Cardinal. Their oratory skill can stir the emotions of entire worlds, leading them to confess personal heresies and mutations, and to betray their neighbours as psykers, Heretics, mutants or other deviants. They are free to wander within an entire diocese and preach amongst the population. They often work on Imperial colonies and are especially useful on worlds where faith is lacking and the people are rebellious against the Imperium. With special dispensation from the Ecclesiarchy, they may even gather armies of Frateris Militia or the Sisters of Battle and lead Wars of Faith against the enemies of the Imperium. Confessors often wear the Rosariusas both protection and a symbol of their rank.

The Adeptus Ministorum also includes an administrative bureaucracy, headed by priests called Arch-Deacons, who control all secular business within the Ecclesiarchy. Arch-Deacons are the administrative counterparts to Cardinals, responsible for the temporal affairs of an entire diocese. The Arch-Deacon's subordinates, known as Deacons, deal with the money entering and leaving a specific diocese or parish, regulate the construction of new shrines and temples and deal with the other secular requirements of running a galaxy-spanning religion.

Adeptus Ministorum Hierarchy

The priests of the Adeptus Ministorum are members of a rigid ecclesiastical hierarchy which includes the following offices, from highest-ranking to lowest:

**Ecclesiarch****Arch-Cardinal****Cardinal****Arch-Deacon****Deacon (Dean)****Firebrands****Drill Abbott****Confessor****Preacher**Ecclesiarch

The Ecclesiarch is the High Priest of the Imperial Cult and is based in a fortress within the Ecclesiarchical Palaceon Terra. Elected by the Adeptus Ministorum's ruling Holy Synod of Arch-Cardinals, the Ecclesiarch's main concerns include the pursuit of the Ministorum's interests in the Senatorum Imperialis, the preparation and launch of new Imperial Crusades and wars of faith, and ensuring the continued religious devotion of the Imperial citizenry. The Ecclesiarch has held a position as a ruling High Lord of Terra since the 32nd Millennium, and is always one of the most influenctial voices on the Senatorum Imperialis.

Arch-Cardinal

The Arch-Cardinal is the official who stands at the top of the Ministorum's hierarchy leading a Sector Synod, which is more often than not more of an idea or principle than a rigid structure or chain of command. Though an Arch-Cardinal is the head of the Sector Synod and commands (or at least has substantial influence over) each of the dioceses in the sector, the true power of the Ministorum rests in the hands of the individual Diocesan Synods, often known by the world (or location on that world) where the Cardinal resides.

Cardinal

Central to the Ministorum's power within a sector of Imperial space are the dioceses, the demesnes of the faith, each of which is under the command of the Cardinals of the Sector Synod. Some dioceses can encompass several worlds or even an entire sector in the case of the officials granted the extremely powerful rank of Cardinal-Astra. This division allows the Ministorum detailed control over the sub-regions within a sector as well as giving individual worlds or specific problems direct attention. Each Cardinal of the Sector Synod is a powerful individual in his or her own right, having risen to his lofty position through years of sacrifice, devotion to the God-Emperor, and most importantly, cunning and relentless politicking. Each Cardinal maintains his own diocese on the world on which he resides, more commonly referred to as his seat of power - the centre of the Cardinal's authority and base of operations within his Arch-Diocese, from which he rarely if ever leaves.

Arch-Deacon

An Arch-Deacon is a senior Ministorum priest who is subordinate to a Cardinal and helps to oversee the daily functions and duties of the Creed Temporal. This branch of the Ecclesiarchy oversees the astronomical wealth flowing into its treasuries, wealth which is rendered by the faithful as their right and proper offering to the Imperial Cult i the service of their souls' salvation. It is the Arch-Deacon's duty to administer to the logistics of the diocese, coordinating the construction and maintenance of its cathedrals as well as countless other institutions such asShrine Worlds, pilgrimage sites, reliquaries and retreats. Each Arch-Deacon is responsible for the distribution of as much wealth as an Imperial Sector Governor or the patriarch of a wealthy interstellar merchant concern, and they are often the subjects of bitter jealousy from such secular lords of the Imperium.

Deacon (Dean)

Below the Arch-Deacons are those Ministorum priests known as Deacons and Deans, who are responsible for the distribution of the resources passed down to them from the Sector Synod, as well as the actual collection of dues from the faithful.

Firebrands

Groups of zealots and militant preachers often serve an important purpose in rooting out heresy. Cells of these fiery individuals pray and recite litanies together, often during combat. These Firebrands must be handled with care by whatever controlling entity (be it Ecclesiarchy or Inquisitorial) puts them in the field, as Firebrands are just as likely to report the existence of a heretical enclave as they are to incinerate the city block where the enclave is meeting.

Drill Abbot

A Drill Abbot is a member of the Ministorum and a decorated veteran of the Imperium's wars who works tirelessly at converting the orphans of martyred Imperial servants into driven and dedicated fanatics prepared for the trials of Imperial life. Drill Abbots run the Scholas Progenium, brutally effective institutions which every year produce untold numbers of Planetary Governors, Imperial Guard Commissars, Adeptus Arbites Arbitrators, Imperial Navy officers,Storm Troopers and Inquisitors.

Confessor

Confessors are free-roaming zealots of the Imperial Cult who use their evangelical platform to agitate the crowds of Imperial citizenry that turn up to hear them. Under the spell of an Arch-Confessor, swathes of citizens will rush forwards to confess their personal heresies, reveal their hideous mutations and betray their comrades as psykers or other untrustworthy deviants. A Confessor might have administrative responsibility for a hive city or, if it is less populated, an entire world, or in frontier regions an entire star system or even a sub-sector. Just as not every Imperial Cardinal heads a diocese, not all Confessors are not responsible for a specific geographic area. Many act autonomously, their duties taking them far and wide across a given region of the Imperium. Some find themselves attached to other Imperial institutions and Adepta. Often, an Imperial Guard general or Imperial Navy admiral might have as his most trusted confidante a senior Confessor, who advises him on spiritual matters and bolsters his resolve to enact the Emperor's will.

Preacher

A Preacher is the lowest ranking member of the Imperial clergy within the Ecclesiarchy. They are known as the Defenders of the Faith. Often individual regiments of the Imperial Guard and vessels of the Imperial Navy are accompanied by dozens of Preachers, many of whom regard it as their duty to personally take the field of battle and provide religious inspiration to those in their care. A Preacher is also the rank of Ministorum priest who is given a parish of his own to run which is centred on an Imperial shrine. A Preacher is the priest of the Imperial Cult who will have the most day-to-day contact with ordinary worshipers. Especially vigorous and charismatic Preachers may be lucky enough to be promoted to become Confessors.

Adeptus Ministorum Specialty Ranks

The Adeptus Ministorum hierarchy also maintains a number of speciality ranks, which include:

**Arch-Exorcist****Banisher****Crusader****Missionary****Iron Evangelist****Sanction Warden****Redemptionist**Arch-Exorcist

Within the Ministorum of the Calixis Sector, there are those priests who chafe at the political restrictions that only allows the Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus to combat the unclean and unquiet entities known as daemons. A large proportion of those clerics who are aware of the existence and nature of daemonkind yearn to take the fight to them, to dispel them and cast them out of the material realm and back to the myriad hells that spawned them. These zealots, known as Arch-Exorcists, relish in combating the daemonic as a holy work that follows the example of the God-Emperor Himself.

Banisher

A Banisher is a specialised holy warrior who is a member of a special religious order of the Adeptus Ministorum known as the Collegia Exterminatus that was formed by the Ordo Malleus of the Calixis Sector. A Banisher is equally skilled at both delving into the forbidden knowledge required to understand the nature of daemons and eradicating daemonic forces with fire and Chainsword. Chosen at a young age from the most pious of children in the Calixian Schola Progenium, their training takes a great deal of time and effort as they earn the faith necessary to fortify their souls against the information they might uncover during their studies of forbidden knowledge. As a result, many Banishers are relatively advanced in age by the time they become Acolytes in service to an Inquisitor. The intensity of their training often leaves a Banisher with scars and augmetic replacements. Their bodies show the sacrifices they have made to keep themselves pure in the eyes of the God-Emperor.

Crusader

A Crusader is a holy warrior of the Adeptus Ministorum who is recruited for his or her unflagging devotion to the God-Emperor. Most are inducted into the ranks of the Ecclesiarchy from a Schola Progenium, selected for their unflagging devotion to the Emperor. To be selected is a great honour, though it leads not only to a gruelling life of asceticism and martial perfection, but also inevitably to an unmourned death in battle against the forces of heresy and apostasy. Nonetheless, such a calling guarantees the opportunity to test sword and shield against Mankind's greatest enemies. Equipped with a Power Sword and Storm Shield, the Crusader is a stalwart warrior whose place is in the heat of battle, surrounded by his foes. Some Inquisitors recruit Crusaders from the honour guard of the Cardinals Crimson - that most mysterious of all the Ecclesiarchy's many orders. It is said that nowhere else in theImperium of Man can more devout warriors be found - save perhaps within the ranks of the famed Adeptus Sororitas. It is improbable that a Crusader's fate will differ greatly in an Inquisitor's service.

Missionary

The Missionaries of the Missionaria Galaxia are a special breed of Imperial servant, and although they operate under the auspices of the Cardinals Palatine, they are in practice a nigh autonomous body within the Adeptus Ministorum. Missionaries are tasked with accompanying all manner of Imperial expeditions into regions of the galaxy lost or previously unknown to the Imperium. Missionaries bear the flame of the Imperial Creed wherever they go, and with it kindle the belief of those long separated from the True Faith.

Iron Evangelist

Priests willing to deliver the doctrine of the Imperial Cult are not rare within the Imperium. There are many who repair the bulwark of the faith with the cement of sermon. Inquisitors who value a strong indoctrination in the Imperial Creed as a bulwark against heresy often recruit these men and women and assemble cells led by an Iron Evangelist to root out heresy within the bowels of the vessels of the Imperial Navy or in the twisting labyrinth of a hive city. Iron Evangelists are groups of Inquisitorial Acolytes who take the word of the Emperor to those who may go years without being given His blessings and thus are in grave danger of falling into heresy through their ignorance.

Sanction Warden

The dangers posed by the psyker are well-documented. According to the doctrine of the Imperial Creed, the witch must be hunted and purged with holy Promethium at every opportunity. However, there are those psykers who are officially sanctioned by the Imperium to use the power of the Warp towards the Emperor's divine purpose, their souls tempered into weapons of the God-Emperor's will. Sanctioned Wardens are groups of Inquisitorial Acolytes chosen from amongst the priests of the Ministorum who monitor Imperial sanctioned psykers at all times for the first signs of corruption.

Redemptionist

A Redemptionist is a fanatical priest of the Adeptus Ministorum who follows an extreme and unforgiving doctrine of faith in which redemption in the eyes of the God-Emperor can only be found in death. Many Redemptionists seek their own redemption on the battlefield for the sins they have committed against the God-Emperor. They also desire to bring redemption to others, finding one sin particularly offensive and seeking any opportunity to bring the Emperor's final judgement to xenos, Heretics or those who traffic with daemons. The Redemptionist movement first began on the Hive World of Necromunda, but has since spread to every corner of the galaxy.

Adeptus Ministorum Minoris Ranks**Pontifice****Relic-Keeper - **Relic-Keepers are priests of the Ministorum who have been charged with preserving and safekeeping the most holy relics of the Imperial Cult, including the relics of the myriad Imperial Saints.**Shrouded Cenobite - **A Shrouded Cenobite is a member of a monastic order of the Ministorum who is dedicated to spending his or her life in contemplation and prayer concerning the mysteries of the God-Emperor. As their name implies, Cenobites often dress in habits with deep cowls that shroud their faces from sight.**Chapel-Master - **A Chapel-Master is a priest of the Ministorum who has been assigned the task of overseeing the sanctity and carrying out the day-to-day administrative tasks of maintaining an Imperial chapel and other places of worship for the faithful.**Logistoras****Quire Masters****Reliquindus**Adeptus Ministorum Sects

The Holy Synod of the Ecclesiarchy and its subordinate Sector Synods and their governing Cardinals are only a part of the Ministorum's presence within each sector. There are many other layers of leadership, synods and cults stretching all the way down to the average Imperial worshipper. System Synods and the variety of the worlds and cultures on which they thrive have given rise to a myriad of Imperial Cults and variances on the orthodox Imperial Creed. The following is a listing of just a fraction of the known Imperial sects:

**Black Priests of Maccabeus** - The Black Priests of Maccabeus, known by some as the **Black Clerics** or the**Ashen Confessors** (and in secret by the more fearful nickname of "pyre-crows"), are clerics that form a loose-knit order of militant priests organised at the behest of the Ordo Malleus to aid those daemon-huntingInquisitors in their work. The Ordo Malleus chose to base their Black Order on Maccabeus Quintus, an often overlooked Shrine World and home to a particularly mystical interpretation of the Imperial Creed. Black Priests are selected from promising candidates taken from the Ministorum's clergy and chosen for their strength of will, the power of their faith and, in many cases, by dint of their survival when confronted by malefic forces in the past. Entrusted with knowledge otherwise forbidden, even to other priests of the Ecclesiarchy, and taught how to focus their will and the purity of their faith to achieve extraordinary things, not least of all the castigation of daemons, clerics who undergo the "Maccabean rites" are forever changed by the experience, and set apart from their fellows in the Ministorum by the nature of their faith and the dark and secret truths about the nature of reality they now carry.**Cult of the Emperor Revenant** - The Cult of the Emperor Revenant is a sect that practices a variance of the Imperial Creed that has a strong funerary nature based upon the God-Emperor's own deathless state. Death is an ever-present reality on most Imperial worlds and how citizens deal with it is often as important as how they live. The members of this sect are found on many worlds within the Calixis Sector, administering to the dead and fostering belief in the power of the Imperium and the countless dead that its glory is built upon. Of all the Imperial Creed's sects, the Revenant Cult is perhaps the one closest to the orthodox doctrines of the Imperial Creed, so much so that many Ministorum servants do not see a difference between it and the more mainstream worship of the God-Emperor. The Cult of the Emperor Revenant is unfortunately also the progenitor of such organisations as the heretical Night Cult. According to some apocryphal sources, the Night Cult can trace their origins to the founding of the Calixis Sector, at a time when the Angevin Crusade was faltering and a man became a saint. It concerns a heretical faction of the Imperial Creed long forbidden, the darkest of proscribed technologies, an apocalyptic prophesy of the End of Days, and the power to make the dead walk.**Drusians** - The Drusians are perhaps the largest and most powerful of the Imperial Cult's sects within theCalixis Sector. Their members are the followers of Saint Drusus, the Lord Militant who successfully completed the Imperium's conquest of the Calyx Expanse that became the Calixis Sector during the Angevin Crusade. This cult is as old as the sector itself. So-called "Drusianism" pervades much of the Cult Imperialis in the Calixian worlds, particularly those that are distant from the sector capital world of Scintilla. Drusianism is a hard and uncompromising reading of the Imperial Creed, emphasising the purifying quality of suffering, the power of holy relics, and the endurance of hardship. An ascetic and largely mystical tradition for the main part, it is somewhat at odds with the cult authorities on Scintilla, who hold to more traditionalist modes of worship but also claim the sector's saint as their own. Many hard-line Drusians consider the sector's noble and mercantile classes to be fundamentally venial and corrupt by nature, and hold little regard for any power or supposed rights such individuals possess. Though they are publicly supported by the Calixian Ministorum and the sector's Arch-Cardinal, the Drusians are often seen as a rival to the orthodox Ecclesiarchy's power and its focused faith in the God-Emperor.**Red Redemption** - The Red Redemption is drawn to the poor underhives, wild Frontier Worlds and primitive feudal cities of the Calixis Sector, feeding on the fears of common men. An extreme variation of the Imperial Creed, the Redemption preaches a zealotry and intolerance beyond even that of the greater Ministorum. They teach that only through pain, cleansing fire and the complete rejection of anything that does not show total and utter devotion to the God-Emperor can a citizen hope to be saved from damnation and the touch of the Dark Gods. While at times the Ministorum and the Red Redemption are at odds, the Imperial church's hierarchy finds them more useful than not and is happy for them to do the dirty work of the faith.**Redemptionists** - Redemptionists are those Ministorum priests who follow an extreme and unforgiving doctrine of faith in which redemption in the eyes of the Emperor can only be found in death. Many Redemptionists seek their own redemption on the battlefield for the sins they have committed against the God-Emperor. They also seek to bring redemption to others, finding one sin particularly offensive and seeking any opportunity to bring the Emperor's final judgement to xenos, Heretics or those who traffic with daemons. The Redemptionist sect was originially founded on the Hive World of Necromunda where it remains a potent religious and political force, but the movement has since found adherents all across the galaxy.**Sisters of the Void** - A benevolent all-female sect of the Ecclesiarchy, the Sisters of the Void travel the pilgrim paths and Warp routes of the Calixis Sector bringing comfort and aid to crewmen and pilgrims alike. Exemplifying the kind and gentle aspect of the God-Emperor, the Sisters believe in the healing power of His light and the protection He brings through the blazing icon of the Astronomican. They are seen as little threat (either politically or to the faith) by the Sector Synod of the Calixis Sector and are accepted as a fairly benign sect. Some whisper, however, that the Sisters of the Void are in fact a front for something more sinister as the Sisters have spent years plying the void so that they might pass invisibly from one world to the next. What their true purpose could be if it actually differs from their stated role is difficult to fathom and certainly neither the Inquisition nor the church have shown an overt interest in them.**Vitrian Covenant** - The Vitrian Covenant is more of an unofficial Imperial Crusade in the Calixis Sector than a religious sect. They are named for the battle that saw the rise of Saint Vidicus and undertake the dual purpose of spreading the faith of the God-Emperor beyond the edges of the Imperium and combating the foul xenos known as Orks. For this reason the Covenant is mostly found on the edges of the Calixis Sector, supporting armies or helping missionaries to settle new and wild Frontier Worlds. Their fanatical hatred of the Greenskins has also seen them travel around the sector using their influence and skills to drum up support for the Margin Crusade, a venture which they view as a vital part of both bringing the Imperial Creed to the lawless void and also curtailing the spread of xenos from their worlds within the Halo Stars. Of course, the fact that the Vitrian Covenant is not wholly aware of the truth behind the Margin Crusade has not stopped the Calixian Sector Synod from using them to raise troops and resources for it.Other Ecclesiarchy OrganisationsAdepta Sororitas

The military arm of the Ecclesiarchy are the Orders Militant of the Adepta Sororitas, who are dedicated to eradicating heresy across the Imperium. The Ecclesiarchy also often works with the Inquisition, especially the Ordo Hereticus, to achieve its goals. The priests of the Ecclesiarchy will, however, often see Radical Inquisitors as little more than Heretics themselves and actively oppose their missions. The Sisterhood, as it is generally known, is expected to maintain a close watch on all servants and departments of the Imperium for heresy, but especially the Ecclesiarchy itself. The Adepta Sororitas' Militant Orders act as the military arm of the Ecclesiarchy defending shrine and Cardinal worlds from attacks by xenos like the Orks or the Forces of Chaos, but are also tasked to serve as the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Hereticus of the Imperial Inquisition when so order by an Inquisitor.

Frateris Templar

The Frateris Templar were the original, all-male army of High Lord Goge Vandire during the Age of Apostasy's Reign of Blood in the 36th Millennium. They were destroyed by a Warp Storm while _en route_ to Dimmamar to pacify the rebellious reborn Confederation of Light raised by Sebastian Thor. The Warp Storm, which is still raging to this day, became known as the Storm of the Emperor's Wrath and many believe that it was created within the Warp by the Emperor to show his anger at Vandire's usurpation of his will. The Frateris Templar have since been disbanded, and their role has instead been assumed by the Sisters of Battle since the Ecclesiarch who ended the Reign of Blood and Goge Vandire's tyrannical rule of the Imperium, Sebastian Thor, declared that no _man_ would ever again bear arms for the Adeptus Ministorum.

Frateris Militia

The Frateris Militia are the unofficial armies of the Ministorum made up of religious zealots who will fight for their faith. The religiously-motivated Frateris fight Wars of Faith against the enemies of the Imperium, often led by a particularly fanatical Confessor, though these forces are rarely well-trained or equipped. Members of the Frateris Militia are not professional soldiers, and receive no training in their role. However, their faith is strong, and they often go on to perform great and terrible deeds in the name of the Master of Mankind.

Missionaria Galaxia

Missionary work is an important activity of the Ecclesiarchy, and its purpose is to bring rediscovered human-settled worlds into the full fold of the Imperial Cult and the worship of the God-Emperor of Mankind. For this purpose, the Missionaries of the Ecclesiarchy's Missionaria Galaxia organisation always accompany Imperial Explorators or evenRogue Traders on their voyages into unknown space in case human worlds are rediscovered. Missionaries of the Missionaria Galaxia also run charitable Missions, which are schools or hospitals on newly discovered Feral orFeudal Worlds that lack advanced technology. When human worlds are rediscovered, Imperial Missions are immediately established alongside any Imperial planetary government. Part of the purpose of these Missions is to further the worship of the Emperor and spread the ideals and culture of Imperial civilisation. They are also vital in evaluating newly-discovered planetary populations for signs of psychic and genetic mutation or the corruption ofChaos.

Schola Progenium

The Schola Progenium are the orphanages run by the Ministorum specifically to raise and train the sons and daughters of Imperial servants who have given their lives in the service of the Emperor. The orphans receive a strict orthodox education in the Imperial Creed, and soon come to regard the Emperor as their spiritual father. Their upbringing will have made them absolutely loyal and devoted servants of the Imperial cause and will have instilled in them a selfless ambition to serve the Imperium and Mankind as a whole just as the Emperor does. These qualities make them well-suited to service in many of the governmental and military branches of the Imperium - the schools of the Schola Progenium provide a large portion of the officers of the Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy, Imperial Guard Commissars, Assassins, the Judges and Arbitrators of the Adeptus Arbites and even, eventually, new members of the Inquisition. Female Progena often enter the Adepta Sororitas. Other Progena become members of the Adeptus Ministorum's clergy, which is open to men and woman alike.


	16. Chapter 16

Imperial Guard

Race

Mankind

Headquarters

Imperial Palace (Terra)

Government

Imperium of Man

Leader

Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard

Military Forces

Imperial Guard Regiments

Establishment

Imperial Reformation (31st Millennium)

The **Imperial Guard** is the largest military force of the Imperium of Man and also serves as the Imperium's primary combat force and first line of defence from the myriad threats which threaten the existence of the human race in the late 41st Millennium. It is comprised of countless billions of men and women - hundreds of thousands of different regiments, supported by a vast array of light and heavy armoured vehicles that provide the Guard's primary offensive punch. They are usually the first Imperial force to respond to a threat if a planet's Planetary Defence Force (PDF) fails to suppress it. They also garrison major locations of strategic or cultural interest to the Imperium and are often found in defensive roles. The Imperial Guard is often referred to as the "Sledgehammer of the Emperor"; the sheer amount of force that the Imperial Guard can bring to bear on the enemy is devastating, but is not as direct or as precise as theirSpace Marine allies, who are described as the "Scalpel of the Emperor." There is no universal uniform or regimental command hierarchy in the Imperial Guard, although it is compulsory for every regiment to have at least one Commissar to maintain the discipline and morale of the men while watching for any signs of corruption or taint in the ranks. However, it is worth noting that a number of worlds copy the uniform used by the regiments of the Cadian Shock Troops, who are viewed as being the most effective of the Imperial Guard's infantry units. The main tactic of the Imperial Guard is to overwhelm the enemy with their endless numbers, while at the same time hammer them into submission with devastating artillery and crush them with powerful main battle tanks.

Anatomy of an Imperial Guard Regiment

The Imperial Guard is a colossal organisation, dwarfing every other military force in the Imperium for sheer manpower, and matched only by the Imperial Navy in logistical complexity and universal significance. It has been claimed that for every star visible from the surface of Terra, there are a hundred million Imperial Guardsmen waging war on some distant world in the Emperor's name, though nobody could possibly know how many Imperial Guardsmen there truly are at any one moment, so vast are their numbers and so quickly do those numbers change. However, what is certain is that every one of these brave souls, and more besides, are required to fight and die for the Imperium in order to try to preserve it.

The matter of assembling and arming the uncountable masses of Guardsmen is the responsibility of the Departmento Munitorum, a department within the Adeptus Administratum responsible for military logistics across the Imperium. Some have claimed that the numbers of the Imperial Guard are matched or even exceeded by the sheer number of scribes, adepts, prefects, and a bewildering array of other administrative officials, whose duty it is to ensure that the Imperial Guard are able to fight their countless wars. In their hands is the impossibly complex task of raising armies from a million individual worlds, each with a different culture, equipping them in an appropriate manner, and ensuring that every man and woman is fed, watered, and supplied with ammunition.

What this all boils down to is the regiment. The regiment is the building block of the Imperial Guard, and the nature of each regiment defines how it is to fight, how it is to be equipped, and the manner in which it is best employed. Regiments are raised either as part of the tithe that all worlds contribute to the Imperium, or as necessary from worlds within a particular distance of a newly-opened warzone. It is a rare world in the Imperium that has not raised at least one regiment of Imperial Guard, with the overwhelming majority of those being the tithe-exempt Forge Worlds of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Chapter homeworlds of the Adeptus Astartes, both of which produce their own particular fighting forces.

Though regarded as such by many within the Departmento Munitorum, a regiment of the Imperial Guard is not a uniform mass of warriors, equal in might and utility to every other regiment. On the contrary, regiments vary immensely in size, structure, and purpose, from small, deadly, armoured regiments, to bewilderingly large regiments of siege infantry. In truth, the regiment is a difficult thing to define, but some might classify it thusly: a regiment is the operational unit of the Imperial Guard, a discrete formation of Imperial Guardsmen, all trained and equipped to operate in a single way, and all drawn from a single world and its dominant culture. All other factors are subject to local variation and prevailing logistical doctrine - at times, all the fighting men and women taken from a single world at a single time have been classified as a single regiment, creating units of millions of men, while other periods and places have attempted to define a set number of warriors or an arbitrarily calculated fighting strength to determine a regiment.

Nonetheless, some elements remain consistent. At the top of every regiment in the Imperial Guard is a single officer, commonly given the rank of Colonel, who serves as the frontline commander. Traditional expectations are that a Colonel takes to the field with his men, leading in person, and is often accompanied by advisors such as Imperial Navy liaisons, Adeptus Ministorum preachers, psykers, Tech-priests, and the dreaded Commissars.

Each regiment is typically divided into several companies, each of which is commanded by a Captain or Major. A company normally consists of several hundred warriors, and can serve well as a fighting unit in its own right, with individual companies commonly split off to achieve distinct objectives pertaining to a regiment's overall mission. Within each company, the unit is further divided. The exact term used varies by type of company, with vehicle companies divided into squadrons, infantry operating in platoons, and artillery operating in batteries. Each platoon, squadron, or battery is typically commanded by a Lieutenant, the most junior of officers, new to the service of the Imperial Guard.

The most basic building block of the regiment is the squad. In an infantry regiment, the squad is the smallest operational unit, overseen by a Sergeant. In an armoured or artillery regiment, each squad is given a single vehicle or artillery piece to control, with different troopers serving as gunners, loaders, drivers, spotters, and a variety of other roles, as required by their duties.

Combat Doctrine

The Imperial Guard is the largest and most diverse military organisation that the galaxy has ever known. Numbering in the billions and equipped with innumerable tanks and super-heavy war machines, the Imperial Guard serves as both the hammer and the anvil of the Imperium of Man. The Imperial Guard is not a swift and precise military tool like the Space Marines. Instead, it is used to bludgeon a foe into oblivion in bloody wars of attrition that can last for Terran months, years or even decades in many cases. Although a single Imperial Guardsman can never be the equal of even the most raw and unblooded Astartes, there are thousands of men in each regiment and it is in the sheer size of its forces that the true strength of the Imperial Guard lies.

An Imperial Guard regiment is mostly uniform in its force composition. Infantry regiments contain no heavy artillery, whilst armoured regiments contain no infantrymen. As a result of this policy, regiments are required to work together in combined arms formations known as battle groups or task forces. This order of battle dates back to the days immediately following the end of the Horus Heresy in the 31st Millennium, when the High Lords of Terra decreed that Imperial Guard regiments should be separate yet interdependent. This was done so that no faction of the Imperial Guard would ever be able to rebel against the Imperium with such devastating effect as the combined arms regiments of the Imperial Army who had joined the Forces of Chaos and supported the traitorous Warmaster Horus.

The _Tactica Imperium _sets down the basic template around which all Imperial Guard regiments are to be organised. Each is divided into companies, some with as few as 3, others with as many as 20. Companies are further divided into between 3 and 6 platoons and these platoons each consist of between 2 and 6 10-man squads led by a command squad whose commanding officer is a lieutenant. Terms and naming conventions may vary from regiment to regiment, and while the regimental commanding officer is normally accorded the rank and title of Colonel, the military and planetary culture from which he is drawn may use a different title for the same rank, ranging from "Knight Commander" to "Chief Hetman". This structure is maintained in all the different types of Imperial Guard regiments. In an armoured regiment the individual Guardsmen form tank crews, with each tank taking the place of an infantry squad as the basic unit. These tanks are then formed into squadrons, led by an officer's command tank, and further organised into armoured companies, a number of which make up the entire armoured regiment. In an armoured regiment that consists of super-heavy tanks, each individual tank is treated as being equivalent to an infantry platoon, meaning that such an elite regiment will only number 9 to 12 super-heavy tanks, in addition to its numerous and uncounted supply and services vehicles.

When a combined arms battle group is required, units are drafted from all of the regiments available by a senior officer, such as a colonel or a captain. These formations can vary in size, from company level units of 100 or so men and 5 or 6 armoured vehicles, to a force almost as large as a full regiment. Some battle groups are a balanced mix of infantry and vehicles. Many, however, are specialised for different tactical challenges. A battle group might consist of Chimera-mounted infantry and self-propelled artillery assigned to support a lightning-fast armoured breakthrough, or it may be an entire company of Sentinel combat walkers aiding a light infantry force in a desperate fight in a thick jungle.

Just as regiments provide individual units for the smaller tactical level battle groups, so entire regiments are often drawn together to form massive strategic-level forces called army groups. These forces are led by high-ranking commanders such as generals and high marshals and can consist of any number of regiments, from as few as 2 to as many as several hundred in the largest, sector-wide Imperial campaigns. The method by which Imperial forces make it to a new war zone are often haphazard, with many thousands of troops from dozens of different regiments sent to a stellar region or star system under assault once the Imperial bureaucracy raises the alarm. Such are the vagaries of travel through the Warp, to say nothing of the difficulties of communication posed by the sheer size of the Imperium, that it is only because so many regiments are despatched that a sufficient number of forces arrives in time to be of any use at all in a specific campaign. It is quite common for thousands of Imperial Guardsmen to be lost in Warp Storms during transit, to be attacked by human or xenos pirates or diverted to an entirely different conflict as the need arises. As such, a high-ranking commander cannot depend on receiving the assets he requested to achieve victory in a given war zone and he will have to improvise a new battle plan based on the forces that actually wind up ultimately being at his disposal. That this usually proves more possible than not is a testament to the versatility of Imperial combat doctrine, but even more weight should be given to the sheer amounts of manpower and materiel that the Imperial Guard can bring to bear. With enough perseverance, even an improper tool can be used to reap results - particularly if a commander is unconcerned with how many of his tools he is willing to lose in the process.

Once an Imperial Guard army group has been assembled where it needs to be, it operates on the same basic principles as a battle group, but on a far larger and more complex scale. Entire regiments of tanks advance under the covering fire of 100 Basilisk self-propelled artillery pieces, supported by human waves of infantrymen. While an Imperial Guard battle group is capable of taking a single tactical objective, an army group can be used to conquer and hold an entire world or even star system, and few enemies of the Imperium are capable of mustering a force that can withstand its sheer momentum.

Operations

The Guardsmen of the infantry form the foundation of the Imperial Guard's structure. However, it is uncommon for regiments to despatch formations made entirely out of Guardsmen without attaching auxiliaries or support elements. In the chain of command, for example, an Imperial Guard officer, often a Colonel or a General, will find himself accompanied by Imperial Sanctioned Psykers drawn from the Adeptus Astra Telepathica's Scholastica Psykana facilities, or officers of the Imperial Navy to relay co-ordinates to harass enemy deployments and conduct interception attempts.

The Imperial Guard is able to draw upon a not inconsiderable number of specialized troops and sub-human and Abhumanauxiliaries. These may include the Storm Trooper Regiments of more disciplined origins, drawn from the Schola Progenium facilities on many Imperial worlds. The Guard can call upon Abhuman Ogrynsfrom Feral Worlds whose brutish strength may be used in order to make up for the Guardsmen's lack of close combat endurance, orRatling snipers whose small size and nimbleness allows them to infiltrate behind enemy lines where they can wreak havoc with their natural talents behind the telescopic sights of their needle rifles.

Though the Imperial Guard has enough men and firepower to throw up a withering wall of laser bolts, most opponents that close the distance with the Guard's lines find themselves at a major advantage in close combat, which more often than not results in a bloodbath as the Guardsmen find themselves outmatched in melee and slaughtered.

Different types of Imperial Guard Regiments utilize different methods of warfare. Though most of their engagements would count as battles of attrition, often Imperial Guard units will work alongside auxiliaries or specialized units in order to achieve different tactical outcomes some which may include, sabotage, infiltration, demolitions.

The Imperial Guard is the stalwart primary fighting force of the Imperium of Man, capable of dispensing a myriad of specialized troops. The Imperial Guard's most prominent asset is its ability to draw upon endless ranks of Guardsman - drawn from various human-settled worlds. Each Imperial world supplies an annual tithe of Guardsmen, often accompanied by quotas of las-gun production and armoured vehicles in order to sustain the never-ending war machine that is the Imperial Guard.

The hierarchy of command and the formations of local Planetary Defence Forces (PDF) may differ from world to world. On some worlds, a PDF may be composed of hiver gangs or other irregular troops or it may be an official, professional army making use of proper military organisation and equipment. In the Imperial Guard, there is only one primary tactical and strategic formation - the Regiment. The Regiment provides a solid command structure that allows for both versatility and lethality when the application of force is needed in any Imperial warzone. Guardsmen form the bulk of many Imperial Regiments, however it is common for Regiments to exclusively include the support drawn from other Regiments in order to sustain operations. The nature of the Regiment alone is one that requires the support of many other Imperial assets. Infantry Regiments consist mainly of Infantry Squads and Conscript Militia. However, Armoured Regiments may include Armoured Fighting Vehicles and Support Tanks with little to no Infantry, or may only include Guardsmen in mechanized formations, known as Armoured Fist squads, where a single Infantry Squad is attached to a dedicated armoured transport, likely a Salamander or Chimera Armoured Personnel Carrier or its equivalent. Thus, most regiments' Armored Fist squads that are borrowed from other regiments as infantry regiments may have no Chimera APC's. Others may be drop troops trained to drop onto a battlefield using drop ships or Drop Pod-like vehicles or they may have Valkyries attached to them for drop troop insertion. The regiments are mixed once the Imperial Navy's transport vessels picks up all the regiments or brings them to their destination so that tank regiments cannot be outflanked by infantry while an infantry regiment will have an attached artillery battery to back it up.

Imperial Guard Regiments are drawn from all types of planets in the Imperium, from Terra itself to pre-industrial feral and feudal worlds, and the contributions of troops from certain planets like Cadia over the ten thousand years of the Imperium's existence run into the millions. The Imperial Guard is constantly at war, freeing worlds from the influence of aliens or the Ruinous Powers, or defending them from the same enemies. The Imperial Guard relies upon the Imperial Navy for transport to and from war zones. The regiments of Guardsmen are as diverse as the worlds they come from.

Where the Space Marines might fight a war through tactics and efficiency, the Guard can easily afford to crush its opposition amidst thousands of lasgun volleys and hundreds of ordnance blasts. Such is the numerical superiority of the Imperial Guard that even Orks can sometimes find themselves outnumbered by the so-called "Sledgehammer" of the Imperium.

Imperial Guard equipment and weaponry spans a wide range of common Imperial hand-held weaponry, from the standard-issue Lasgun to the high-powered Hellgun and Hot-Shot Lasgun for Storm Troopers. Likewise, the Imperial Guard soldiers can also range in quality from Cadian Guardsmen who are trained to kill from childhood, to ordinary Imperial citizens dragged from their homes and stores, handed a Lasrifle and Flak Armour and conscripted into the Guard. However, every Guardsmen will be given intensive training, if not on there homeworld then in transit to their first war zone. They are taught how to shoot and use special and heavy weapons effectively for weeks before they are sent into combat, and braced for the inevitable shock of being on a foreign and sometimes alien world. A Guardsman who spent his youth on a hive world will probably never have seen the open sky before, while a savage Guardsman from a feral world will have never seen a city or factory or a motorized vehicle before he joined the Guard.

Logistics

Each regiment of the Imperial Guard includes a substantial number of soldiers equipped with a broad range of wargear. The simple matter of billeting, feeding, and providing for the basic needs of these troops requires substantial resources. Of course, providing them with adequate equipment to engage in extended conflicts only complicates these matters. Ostensibly, the Departmento Munitorumultimately assumes full responsibility for supplies. The overworked scribes and adepts must constantly verify that the appropriate gear is sent to each regiment so that they may function at acceptable levels of efficiency.

When a regiment is initially raised, its home planet is expected to provide ample supplies as part of their military tithe to the Imperium. Consequently, the initial supply of foodstuffs, uniforms, battle armour and standard kit that are issued to each trooper are generally consistent with those used as part of the planet's standing military of Planetary Defence Forces. The Lasgun is the sole exception to this rule. Even on worlds where that weapon is not commonly used, Imperial Guard units are issued some variant of the Lasgun as their standard weapon. Only after a regiment has been issued these supplies and undergone at least rudimentary training can the planetary tithe be considered complete. The variation between different homeworld military traditions and cultural proclivities leads to the substantial variations that are observed between Imperial Guard regiments from different star systems.

Unfortunately, these initial supplies are seldom sufficient to maintain a regiment through an extended campaign. Vehicles, weapons, and gear rapidly degrade under battlefield conditions. Foodstuffs are quickly depleted as the thousands of soldiers strive to remain in effective fighting condition. As a consequence, the Departmento Munitorum must continue to ship supplies, with the help of the Imperial Navy, to needy war zones. For worlds that regularly provide regiments as tithe, additional supplies may exceed their capacities. Instead, food must be drawn from agricultural worlds with available production, while other gear often comes from manufactoria. Because of this, over time, as a regiment is repeatedly resupplied, its arms and equipment may begin to show some variation.

In practice, the vast reserves of food, fuel, and munitions required represent a substantial issue for any Imperial Guard regiment. In order to stretch them, rationing is a crucial factor. Officers responsible for supply and inventory must take constant care to see that all wargear is allocated in a responsible fashion. Otherwise, these reserves may be quickly depleted, leaving a regiment unable to operate at their expected efficiency levels. Different regiments employ a variety of policies to see that these allocations are performed in a reliable fashion. Ultimately, however, it boils down to a logistical system that ensures the necessary supplies are available when needed, but may not be squandered.

An Imperial Guardsman is a sworn servant of the God-Emperor. His life is the Imperium's to spend in whatever way his commanders see fit. In the same vein, a Guardsman does not own any of his wargear. Instead, it is all entrusted to his care by the Departmento Munitorum. Because of this, a soldier in the Imperial Guard cannot be expected to purchase new equipment or to receive special compensation in exchange for his service. At least, that is how the system is intended to work.

In practical terms, things function slightly differently. Every Guardsman is issued a standard kit that is consistent with the gear provided to all members of his regiment. In addition, specialist gear is provided to soldiers who have particular responsibilities. This might include a special or heavy weapon, tools required for a specific responsibility, or even gear that is appropriate for a specific mission or environment. Once equipment is issued, soldiers are fully responsible for maintaining it and returning it, when requested, in fully operational condition. Any gear lost or damaged through the course of training or conflict must be fully justified to regimental command. The consequences for unacceptable losses can be unpleasant.

Often, Guardsmen may wish to acquire gear that is outside of the normal mission specifications. Sometimes this may simply be to have the best possible equipment for the situation. Other times, something might land in Guardsmen's lap with little explanation. The galaxy is enormous, and there are countless Imperial battlefronts with similar or even identical names. The adepts of the Departmento Munitorum may make clerical errors and deliver something entirely inappropriate. If the wargear is assigned through official channels to a unit, then that group must assume full responsibility for it. However, if the goods are delivered without a paper trail, then the lucky Guardsmen might be able to exploit it for their own purposes.

Relations with the Adeptus Astartes

The Imperial Guard is composed of men and women possessed of unquenchable faith in the God-Emperor of Mankind, but they are still ultimately mortals of flesh and blood. To the common troopers, the superhuman Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes are as gods walking amongst men and for most of the common people of the Imperium, including the troops of the Imperial Guard, they are a rare sight indeed. Most Imperial Guard troopers will never see a Space Marine, let alone fight alongside one, and as such they are the subjects of all manner of legends, myths, and superstitions. Different Imperial cultures, and the Imperial Guard regiments drawn from them, have their own beliefs about Space Marines. Some hold them in awe as the literal sons of the Emperor, whilst others fear them as the deliverers of the Emperor's divine judgement. While it is true that a Space Marine can spit acid, in their ignorance many claim they can also kill with a glance or rout an army with a single word. Tales abound of small groups of Space Marines conquering entire planets or holding off wave after wave of slavering xenos fiends. SomeChapters, in particular the Ultramarines, are lionised across the Imperium. Others, such as the Blood Drinkers, inspire dread.

Any Imperial Guard trooper finding himself in the presence of a Space Marine is likely to drop to his knees in abject supplication, so potent is the martial bearing of a Battle-Brother of the Adeptus Astartes. Even senior Imperial Guard officers might find themselves stammering like newly commissioned subalterns when conversing with a Space Marine. In the main, most Space Marines barely notice mere mortals and it takes a great and rare man indeed to earn their respect. Rumours of their presence in a war zone can often generate great excitement amongst Imperial Guardsmen, but such rumours often prove to be false. An encounter with a single squad of Space Marines is a legendary encounter for the mortals of the present-day Imperium, even those mortals who are themselves pledged to the Emperor's service, and will result in hushed tales of awe told around the tables of the officers' mess for many years to come.

Imperial Guard Rank Hierarchy

The military organisation of the Imperial Guard is a simple, hierarchical chain of command to which blind adhesion is required, especially from the lower ranks. Independent thinking and action is at best frowned upon, and at worst sanctioned by death. This one-way immutable decision structure is the only method that has proven efficient in coordinating the gargantuan resources necessary for the correct deployment of the Imperial Guard in a given war zone.

The main issues of confusion and lack of cohesion within the Imperial Guard's hierarchy come from the interdependence of the Imperial Guard with the Imperial Navy and the Adeptus Administratum's Departmento Munitorum. Indeed, following the Horus Heresy, the Primarch Roboute Guilliman made sure that no single individual would ever again have enough military power to threaten the stability of the Imperium. Thus, the Imperial Guard furnishes the manpower, the Departmento Munitorum furnishes the materiel and the Imperial Navy ensures air superiority and transports both men and weapons to their objective without intervening directly on the ground other than providing air support. The arrangement has proven effective, but politicking amongst Imperial officers can lead to confusion in the chain of command as they vie for seniority and the most prestigious assignments. It is one of the roles of the Commissariat to ensure, by force of arms if necessary, that the Imperial military's chain of command always remains clear and operationally efficient.

From highest to lowest, the ranks of the Imperial Guard include:

**Lord Commander Militant** (supreme commander of the Imperial Guard and a High Lord of Terra)**Warmaster (Lord Solar)** (special rank only bestowed upon a general officer who leads an Imperial Crusade)**Lord Commander** (supreme military commander of one of the five Imperial Segmentae)**Lord General Militant** (supreme military commander of a designated theatre of operations)**General** (various different titles for this rank exist)**Colonel** (various different titles for this rank exist)**Major****Captain** (various different titles for this rank exist)**Lieutenant****Sergeant****Corporal****Trooper****Commissars, Priests of the Ecclesiarchy, Tech-priests, Sanctioned Psykers, Inquisitors** (All have no official rank in the Imperial Guard)High Command

Since the dark days after the end of the Horus Heresy when the Imperial Reformation was completed by Robute Guilliman, the Imperial Guard has been controlled jointly by the Chancellor of the Estate Imperium, the Master of the Administratum and the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard. These three High Lords of Terra represent the top of the chain of command for the Imperium as a whole. In matters of strategy, it is the Lord Commander Militant who is the supreme commander of the Imperial Guard, and he is directly assisted by the five Lord Commanders of the Imperial Guard, one for each of the five Segmentae of the Imperium. Since most of the time of the Lord Commander Militant is occupied defending the Imperial Guard's interests in the Senatorum Imperialis, it falls to the Lords Commander Solar, Pacificus, Tempestus, Obscurus and Ultima to ensure the correct day-to-day deployment of the Imperial Guard in their Segmentum. The highest "conventional" rank reachable in the Guard is that of Lord General Militant, the highest rank above the General Staff corps. This rank brings with it command of armies of almost limitless number, and the responsibility for command of a whole theatre of operations. It is the duty of the Lord General Militant to not only ensure military objectives are met, if necessary by negotiating for the assistance of the Adeptus Astartes, but also to ensure that the retaken or defended territories quickly return to the fold of the Administratum and the Ecclesiarchy. It is an uneasy rank to bear, for not only must the Lord General Militant be a keen strategist, he must also be a good politician and have the courage to stand up to the priests of the Ecclesiarchy or even to a Space Marine Chapter Master when necessary.

General Staff

The General Staff of the Imperial Guard is not a coherent organisation; the term is principally used to describe all general officers who serve in the command echelons above those of regimental level. The Imperial General Staff serves the Lord General Militant directly. It is a highly decentralised formation, with its officers present in every battle theatre in the Imperium. Most members of the General Staff bear the rank of General (or the cultural equivalent depending on their homeworld of origin) and each of these men is in command of a battlegroup or multi-regiment force. It is the task of the General Staff to ensure that their objective is met, that the men under their command work efficiently together despite sometimes wildly varying origins and home cultures and that they work well with the forces of the Adeptus Astartes and the Orders Militant of the Adepta Sororitas when they are present. More junior officers can also be found in the General Staff; they are drawn from individual regiments to act as aides and administrative assistants. They do not exercise individual authority over other troops and merely act as conduits between their direct superiors and other officers. A position common in the General Staff is that of Imperial Tactician, a non-command rank that nevertheless is vital. As trained staff officers, Tacticians help to devise and organise battle plans and strategy.

Operating in parallel to this command tree is that of the other Imperial organisations the Imperial Guard comes into contact with, principally that of the Commissariat. Commissars are integral parts of the Imperial Guard command echelons, with every regiment having at least one Commissar attached to it, and likely more. Commissars are also normally included in any General Staff grouping. Occasionally, one or more Inquisitors will also attach themselves to the General Staff, especially where the Imperium faces the Forces of Chaos. Although they are technically allowed to take command of any Imperial Guard force, most Inquisitors leave actual tactical leadership of such a force to its professional officers, only intervening when a situation requiring their particular expertise emerges. Other "civilians" who will operate in parallel to the Imperial Guard's chain of command are the numerous priests of the Adeptus Ministorum who accompany the Guard's soldiers and ensure their devotion towards the God-Emperor, and the Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus who provide the required expertise to keep the numerous machines and vehicles of the Imperial Guard working. Last but not least come the psykers of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, theAstropaths and Sanctioned Psykers who will counsel the various officers and allow them to coordinate their efforts and face off against foes who also wield the power of the Empyrean.

Warmaster

An unusual command rank outside the normal hierarchy of the Imperial Guard is that of Warmaster, the Imperial general officer who serves as the supreme commander of an Imperial Crusade. There is rarely more than one Warmaster operating within the Imperium at any one time, due to the extreme powers given to them. The title was created in recognition of Horus' promotion by the Emperor to take his place as the supreme commander of all Imperial military forces during the latter half of the Great Crusade, after the Emperor had retired to Terra to begin work on his secret project to open the Eldar Webway up to human use. At present, the title of Warmaster, officially designated as "Lord Solar" (not to be confused with the Lord Commander Solar who serves as the commander of all Imperial military forces in the Segmentum Solar) is one of the most powerful ranks that can be granted to a general officer of the Imperial armed forces, including officers of the Imperial Guard, the Imperial Navy or even the Chapter Master of one of the Adeptus Astartes Chapters who is commanding a much larger Imperial Crusade force. The rank is officially second in the Imperial military hierarchy only to that of the Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard, who serves on the Senatorum Imperialis as one of the High Lords of Terra and is the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Guard.

The title of Warmaster is bestowed by the High Lords of Terra in the present Imperium only when an Imperial Crusade is being planned and resources from multiple Imperial sectors are needed. The supreme overall command designated by the rank of Warmaster is necessary as inter-and intra-service strife and bureaucratic rivalries might make assembling the materiel required and co-operating in the field difficult for officers of the different services without a clear grant of supreme authority. The rank is not available unless granted by the High Lords of Terra and it is the normal formulation to say that such an individual has been given his or her command by the Emperor himself. There is rarely more than one Warmaster operating within the Imperium at any one time, due to the extreme powers given to the holder of the title.

Some consider the title of Warmaster to be cursed or a sign of ill-omen because of the ties of the rank to Horus and the Horus Heresy, the terrible galactic civil war that tore the Imperium in two over ten thousand standard years ago. This is one reason why the title is rarely granted, and why it is officially designed as "Lord Solar". It is also the reason why the Forces of Chaos now grant that title to the Chaos Lord who is capable, like Horus, of uniting all the many different Chaotic factions under the banner of Chaos Undivided in pursuit of the single goal of destroying the Imperium of Man.

Regimental Officers

According to the _Tactica Imperium_, Imperial Guard regimental command officers range in rank from Colonel to Lieutenant. In practice, however, the individual regiments making up the vast Imperial Guard are drawn from so many different human worlds and cultures that the actual name given to an officer rank can vary widely across the Guard. Regimental officers always hail from the same world as the troops they command, assuming their officer rank at the initial formation of the regiment. Providing a regiment with officers from its homeworld is an easy but extremely effective way to enhance an enlisted Guardsman's loyalty and morale.

While the exact title of an officer will vary depending on which Imperial world his regiment hails from, the various regimental ranks are standardised as:

**Colonel -** The most senior officer in a regiment and the commander of the regiment.**Major -** A Major usually serves as the executive officer of an Imperial Guard regiment, and the primary assistant to the regiment's commanding Colonel. This rank is not universal in the Imperial Guard's organisation and only exists in certain regiments**Captain -** The Imperial Guard's Captains serve as Combat Unit Commanders, and can command either multiple infantry platoons bound together into a company, or multiple Armoured Fists bound together into an Armoured Company. Captains are the most common senior officers found in an Imperial Guard regiment.**Lieutenant -** Lieutenants are the most junior officer rank to be found in the Imperial Guard. They serve as platoon leaders or as the leader of a single Armoured -Commissioned Officers

Sergeants, Corporals and other non-commissioned officer ranks act as small unit commanders for the Imperial Guard, as well as providing almost constant oversight of the main body of Guardsmen within a regiment. They carry out any tasks assigned to them by their officers and are essential to the running of the regiment.

**Sergeant -** A Sergeant is a non-commissioned officer of the Imperial Guard who is either in charge of a single squad of 10 Guardsmen, or the tank commander for a single tank. Although they are often thought of as mere grunts, good Sergeants are just as necessary to the Imperial Guard's mission as good Generals, and some Sergeants have gained famous renown thanks to their bravery, resourcefulness or sheer resilience. Legendary Imperial heroes such as Sergeant Lukas Bastonne, Gunnery Sergeant "Stonetooth" Harker and Jarran Kell are all proud to hold the rank and that "they work for a living" rather than enjoy the privileges and pomp of the Imperial Guard's officer corps.**Corporal -** A Corporal is a non-commissioned officer of the Imperial Guard who serves as a second and aide to his squad Sergeant. He will also serve as a section leader during patrols or on sentry duty when the whole squad is spread out or not employed as a whole. In armoured regiments, it is common to have the main gunners and drivers of all tanks promoted to the rank of Corporal, while the secondary gunners/loaders and theVox operators remain simple enlisted Guardsmen. This is done to denote the fact that main gunners and drivers hold the most prestigious positions within the armoured machine. It is purely a question of prestige though, for on the battlefield, a tank commander is his vehicle's sole lord and Guardsmen

The enlisted rank-and-file troops of the Imperial Guard perform a large variety of combat and support roles and make up the vast bulk of the Imperial Guard's forces. They are the grunts who ultimately get the job done for the Emperor. There are two kinds of troops in the Imperial Guard, namely the "regular" professional Guardsmen who have been raised from their homeworld and trained as part of the Imperial tithe and conscripts. Conscripts are those civilians present in an Imperial Guard warzone who get inducted into the Imperial Guard to replace losses for the duration of the conflict. Well-equipped but poorly trained, Imperial Guard conscripts are often used as reserve troops, manning static defence posts and secondary battle lines, allowing the Imperial commanders to deploy their best troops on the frontline.

Commissariat

The Commissariat attaches one or more Commissars to each Imperial Guard regiment in order to ensure that discipline and loyalty to the Emperor are maintained. A Commissar is a political officer and doctrinal enforcer who has no official rank within the Guard's hierarchy, but he or she has the supreme authority to punish or execute any soldier, whatever his rank, that he judges to have failed in his duties to the God-Emperor. Should the necessity arise, a Commissar can assume command of an Imperial Guard force for the duration of a battle, but he will relinquish it at the end of the fighting to a regular officer.

Adeptus Ministorum

The Preachers and Confessors of the Ecclesiarchy who attach themselves to the Imperial Guard hold no official rank within the Guard's hierarchy, but their fiery sermons and acts of devotion will bolster the faith of the troops and inspire them to greatness, making them fearlessly and zealously rush forward to exterminate the enemies ofMankind in the name of the Emperor. Many a battle has been won by a Priest leading a platoon of Guardsmen forward to purge their opponents in holy flames. However, Imperial Guard officers often consider a member of the Ecclesiarchy attached to their command a mixed blessing: their presence is a potent morale bolster for the Guardsmen, but often a Priest will urge the men into a heroic but tactically unsound frontal charge, forcing the officers to modify their plans on the spot with potential catastrophic results.

Adeptus Mechanicus

The Tech-priests and Enginseers of the Adeptus Mechanicus are honoured guests of any Imperial Guard formation to which they are routinely attached. They hold no official rank within the Guard's hierarchy, but all Guardsmen are under the explicit command to protect the servants of the Machine God and assist them whenever necessary, such is the importance of their work to the Guard's mission.

Adeptus Astra Telepathica

Sanctioned Psykers and Astropaths are often detached as counsellors to the various commanding officers of the Imperial Guard. They hold no formal rank in the Guard's hierarchy, and are often reviled by the men they serve with, who have been raised on worlds where the ancient human prejudice against those who wield psychic abilities can still be quite strong. The fear of the mutant is so deeply ingrained in the mind of the average Guardsman that Sanctioned Psykers will have a very hard life alongside the men they serve with, and will always be treated with suspicion and watched by their comrades for any signs of daemonic possession or other Warp-taint. Yet the help they can provide to the Imperial Guard thanks to their psychic powers, be it long-range communication or unleashing the potent energies of the Empyrean upon the battlefield, is potent and capable of turning the tide of a close-fought campaign.

Inquisition

An Inquisitor, regardless of which Ordo he or she serves, holds no official rank in the Imperial Guard or any of the other Imperial armed forces. However, upon simple presentation of his Inquisitorial rosette, an Inquisitor can commandeer any Imperial military asset, from a single Guardsman to a whole battlegroup. The most sensible Inquisitors leave the tactical considerations to the professional soldiers, and often use the masses of the Imperial Guard as a distraction whilst they proceed to their objective with a small Kill-team of specialists drawn from their own Acolytes or their Ordo's Chamber Militant, but it is not unheard of for Inquisitors to actually assume command of a large Imperial Guard force, lending their peculiar expertise against a foe to the blunt instrument that is the Guard. Most officers dread being seconded to an Inquisitor, for it is akin to a death sentence: all too often those Guardsmen seconded to service with the Inquisition are callously sacrificed to hold the line to the last man while the Inquisitor purges the heart of corruption with his chosen team of Acolytes or specialists, and even if some Guardsmen manage to survive the mission, Inquisitors never hesitate to execute all those who have come in contact with Chaotic or xenos corruption to prevent its spread to other regions of the Imperium.

Psykers in the Imperial Guard

Ruinous power. Highly destructive capabilities. A wild card, capable of turning the tides of war. These are the thoughts of many in theDepartmento Munitorum when the idea of psykers comes into their minds. For the troops that must serve alongside these beings, they are enigmatic monsters drawing upon eldritch forces, kept in check only by the steady shot of a Commissar's Bolt Pistol. Psykers are feared throughout the Imperium with good reason. On Feral Worlds, witches conjure demonic power and break all laws of nature. On more civilized worlds, those who are shown to be psychically active rarely have the time to even realise the power they hold before they are captured and taken to the dreaded Black Ships. From there, they either prove themselves useful enough to serve where needed, or prove too wild and dangerous to be allowed to live; those that come up wanting are taken to Terra. Once there, they will join tens of thousands more psykers in giving their souls to sustain the God-Emperor for another day.

While psykers are feared and distrusted throughout the Imperium, the empire of Mankind could not function without them. Psykers are the links that hold the human-settled galaxy together - psychic communication is the only means the Imperium has to communicate over the vast distances of space. Astropaths relay orders, allowing the sweeping force of the Imperial armies to spread across the galaxy. Without psykers, the Imperium would fall apart, with all of the many worlds Man has claimed being unable to communicate with even the lords of their sector. However, every psyker is also a grave danger to those around them. Each psyker is a gateway through which the daemons of the Warp may enter the material world and bring destruction to Mankind. Thus, the collection and training of those who show signs of this power is a serious - and often brutal - undertaking. Those who brandish the power of the Warp in the hopes of building cultish power often meet very swift ends at the hands of dreaded Inquisitors.

However, those who prove useful may be put to work for the benefit of Mankind. Clever and competent Sanctioned Psykers may be put to use by the Imperial Guard, or find a place in the Imperial Navy, giving Imperial Commanders advice pulled from the Aether. Particularly wily and talented psykers may be called in to serve the Inquisition. Many psykers are branded and marked, ensuring that they may be easily identified and punished for any unusual activity, wherever they may be.

Psykers play an important role amongst the ranks of the Imperial Guard. Gathered into large psychic choirs, a group of psykers can weave their power together to perform extraordinary feats. As they gain experience, psykers can even ascend to the rank of Primaris Psyker, accompanying Imperial commanders into battle and summoning incredibly destructive powers to turn the tides of battle. These potent individuals are viewed with a mix of fear and awe by the general ranks of Guardsmen, and having a psyker attached to an Imperial Guard squad can raise tensions considerably.

The Imperium needs psykers, but only those who can use the unstable powers of the Warp for the good of Mankind. When the seed of power is found on any Imperial world, they are gathered, sedated and sent away on board the dreaded Black Ships. They are tested, and those found worthy are selected to attend the revered Scholastica Psykana, where they may learn to control their power. Out of these countless psykers, only a very small percentage will leave alive. Most meet their end in the deadly training, or are executed by the overseers when their power exceeds their control. If they are to control the energies of the Empyrean, they must first learn its true nature. Many are driven mad when they first look into the roiling energies of the Warp, and see it staring back at them. Those who survive their trials may become Sanctioned Psykers.  
Once sanctioned, a psyker may be approached by certain powerful individuals, if they have shown exceptional power and control. For most Sanctioned Psykers, they will get their chance to serve the Imperium and prove their loyalty to the Emperor amongst the ranks of the Imperial Guard.

Psy Rating (PR) is a raw measure of a psyker's power and his ability to draw power from the Warp. The higher a psyker's PR, the more powerful he will be. PR usually ranges from 1 (a novice Imperial psyker or petty Warp-witch) to 10 (a monstrous Greater Daemon or masterful Eldar Farseer), though in some extremely special cases it may go higher still. A starting Sanctioned Psyker of the Imperial Guard usually has a Psy Rating of 2, with a Primaris Psyker reaching 5 or 6 at the height of his power. Sanctioned Psykers' individual relative weakness is the reason why they gather in Circles when in service to the Guard, as their combined power allows the Circle to face off against a truly powerful psyker and prevail where each Sanctioned Psyker individually would be swept aside.

Unfortunately for the Guardsmen fighting the Imperium's wars, the psykers of the Imperium are not the only beings in the galaxy who can wield the foul powers of the Warp. From mysterious Eldar Farseers and vicious Chaos Sorcerers, to unpredictable Ork Weirdboyz and the ominous Zoanthropes of the Tyranid Hive Fleets, powerful psychic individuals stand amongst the ranks of almost all of the enemies of man. Simply seeing the destruction that can be wrought by these individuals can drive a Guardsman mad.

Psyker

A **Psyker** is an individual of any intelligent species in the_Warhammer 40,000_ universe who possesses some degree of psychic ability or powers. Psychic powers are sometimes referred to as sorcery in the Imperium of Man and among the Eldar, particularly when such powers are used in such a way that they show no regard for the dangers they may spawn for others or they are used in pursuit of the agenda of the Chaos Gods. Psykers draw their powers from the dimensional realm known as the Immateriumor the Warp that underlies four-dimensional realspace and is the source of all psychic energy in the universe. As such, psykers, particularly human psykers whose minds are far less disciplined than their Eldar counterparts, are often in danger of possession by the daemonic entities of the Warp, insanity and ultimate corruption by the Ruinous Powers of Chaos.

Psykers of the Galaxy

Most of the intelligent races in the _Warhammer 40,000_ universe employ psykers on the battlefield; some of these psykers are inevitably more potent than others. There are three exceptions to this: the Tau, the Dark Eldar and the Necrons. The Tau have yet to develop any psykers among their race because they have only recently evolved to fully sentient status. The Dark Eldar, though as possessed of inherent psychic ability as their Craftworld counterparts, fear that the use of psychic powers only further hastens the loss of their souls to Slaanesh. The Necrons no longer possess souls since they transferred their consciousnesses into their necrodermis bodies and became creatures wholly of the physical universe like their C'tan masters; as a result they no longer generate any presence within the Immaterium and cannot draw upon any form of psychic energy from that realm.

The Imperium of Man

The genetic mutation which grants a human being the ability to draw upon the psychic energy of the Immaterium has become increasingly common since the Neolithic Age. This change is the harbinger of Mankind's slow evolution into a fully psychic species much like the Eldar who will be more intelligent, more capable and ultimately more peaceful than humanity is at present. Unfortunately, this process has been quite uneven and even the most powerful human psykers still have minds that have not developed to the point that they can touch the Warp with the level of control wielded by the Eldar Farseers. As such, because of this lack of mental development and Mankind's own still deeply flawed, covetous nature, most human psykers always run a substantial risk of being possessed by the daemonic entities of the Warp and spreading the death and destruction of Chaos wherever they go. It is for this reason that the Emperor of Mankind largely banned the use of psychic powers throughout the Imperium of Man save in a few notable exceptions at the Council of Nikaea during the Great Crusade. Psykers, although justifiably feared throughout humanity's history because of their extraordinary powers and the equally extraordinary dangers they sometimes unleashed on those around them, serve several vital roles within the Imperium today under the exceptions laid out by the Council of Nikaea some ten millennia ago.

Psykers are too dangerous to remain at liberty on the Imperium's myriad worlds; their minds are susceptible todaemonic possession as their strong presences in the Warp can serve as gateways into the material universe for all kinds of Warp entities if they are weak or undisciplined with their powers. Uncontrolled, they can intentionally or unintentionally cause the destruction of entire worlds and have done so in the pre-Imperium past, such as during the terrible days of the Age of Strife. Humans found to be bearing the psychic mutation, if they are not simply killed, are sent to Terra aboard the infamous Black Ships which endlessly traverse the Imperium.

All human psykers have an ordained role as servants of the Imperium if they have the willpower to control their abilities and not become a danger to others. Their exact role depends on the psychic powers they manifest and their strength of character and will, though psykers who have some use for the Imperium are known as Sanctioned Psykers while individuals who manifest unusually strong psychic powers often become known as Primaris Psykers, the most powerful human psykers in existence.

Psykers serve within the Imperial Guard and the Space Marine Chapters, employing their powers in battle as well as for civil duties. Imperial Navigators use their psychic "third eye" to cross safely through the Immaterium using the faster than light Warp-Drive employed by all Imperial starships. Astropaths provide faster than light communication as their telepathy is not confined to the speed of light since messages travel through the Warp much as starships use the Warp to make interstellar jumps. Thousands of psykers are sacrificed every year to sustain the Emperor's psychic presence in the Warp, and thousands more must constantly be drained to power the Astronomican, which broadcasts an enormous homing signal through the Warp which is used as a point of reference by starship Navigators. However, the Imperium of Man also ruthlessly executes countless less-fortunate psykers who are seen as mutants, heretics, potential threats to their homeworlds, or gateways to the daemons and corruption of Chaos.

Astropaths

(short for _Astro-telepath_) serve throughout all the Imperium's many governmental divisions and make up a communication network designed to transmit and receive psychic messages through interstellar space. New Astropaths are chosen from the multitudes of psykers who are born across the Imperium every year and brought to Terra on the Black Ships due to their great power. Once chosen, Astropaths receive psychic training by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica's teaching division which is known as the Scholastia Psykana, before they are "soul-bound" to the Emperor. This psychic ritual transfers some of the Emperor's vast power - and more importantly, his mental control - to the psyker. Such an experience is quite physically traumatic for the psyker and not all survive or maintain their sanity. Even the survivors suffer damage to their physical senses, especially their eyes, so that almost all Astropaths are blind, their optical nerves burnt out during the soul-binding process. Their increased psychic senses, however, tend to make up for this loss of sight and most Astropaths have the uncanny ability to see everything just as well as a sighted person despite their lack of vision.

Being joined with the Emperor is necessary, as it greatly increases Astropaths' already formidable powers, granting them full control over the ability for which they were chosen - the transmission and reception of psychic messages across hundreds of light-years of space. Due to the draining nature of their job and the costs incurred by soul-binding, many Astropaths are physically frail and can die quite young due to sheer mental exhaustion.

Imperial Guard

Some of the psykers recruited into the Adeptus Astra Telepathica are trained to serve within the Imperial Guard asSanctioned Psykers rather than as Astropaths. These psykers may draw upon the power of the Warp, unleashing it upon their enemies as a weapon. They are also called upon to advise high-ranking Imperial Guard officers, though with varying degrees of success. Their limited training and equipment leads them to be more vulnerable to the perils of the Warp than the much more powerful psyker Librarians of the Space Marine Chapters. Each time a Sanctioned Psyker utilises their power, they put themselves at considerable risk and are prone to have their minds destroyed in the process. Some Psykers in rare cases have even literally exploded from overloading their bodies with Warp energy, taking out entire Guard squads nearby. That aside, they are still a potent force when deployed and used properly. On the battlefield, Sanctioned Psykers can advise an officer and guide their command, protect him from psychic attack, or fire bolts of lightning from their hands. Despite their use, Sanctioned Psykers are at best tolerated, and at worst loathed, by their companions. They are never allowed to stray far from the ever-watchful gaze of the regiment's Commissar, who can and will execute the psyker at the slightest sign of Warp taint, "for the psyker's own good!" The fact that many Sanctioned Psykers meet their demise at the end of a Commissar's Bolt Pistol has earned them the dubious nickname of "bolt-magnets" amongst the rank-and-file soldiers of the Guard.

If a Sanctioned Psyker manages to survive a term of service in the Imperial Guard, he will be returned to the care of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, who will then test the veteran psyker thoroughly for mental fortitude and psychic might. If the psyker survives those tests, he will be trained to become a Psyker Primaris, and taught how to harness the power of lesser psykers and make it subservient to his own. When he rejoins the Imperial Guard, the Psyker Primaris will be able to form a "circle" or "coven" with other Sanctioned Psykers. With the power of the circle at his disposal, the Psyker Primaris' precognitive predictions will be more accurate, his protective wards and abjurations more potent and his psychic attacks more devastating. And yet, for all his might and utility to the Imperium, even a Psyker Primaris is not spared the suspicious gaze of the Commissar, and he too may one day find himself executed by a Bolt Pistol shot swiftly and surely delivered.

Space Marines

Psykers are employed by the Adeptus Astartes in the form of theirChapter Librarians. These individuals are chosen from among the most powerful psykers in the Imperium. Librarians are responsible for maintaining the records of the Chapter they belong to, hence their name, and they can also use their talents to discern which psychic mutants are dangerous and which can be utilised by the Imperium as Sanctioned Psykers, Astropaths, and even new Librarians. Librarians, having much better equipment (a Psychic Hood, etc.), willpower, protection and training, as well as the genetic enhancements of a Space Marine, are much less prone to falling prey to the perils of the Warp than other Imperial psykers. On the battlefield, Librarians are fearsome opponents, able to unleash devastating psychic powers and psychically augment their own physical prowess. They are also skilled at defending themselves and their Battle-Brothers from psychic attack.

Imperial Inquisition

Though they are tasked with hunting down rogue psykers and collecting latent ones for training to aid the Imperium among many other duties, many members of the Inquisition are psykers themselves, Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor being an especially potent example. Like so much about their organisation, one Inquisitor's psychic abilities can vary greatly from another's. Some specialise in unleashing torrents of fire and other direct psychic weapons, while others, like Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn, specialize in powers that aid them in interrogations or to fool an enemy into stepping out from cover, dropping his weapon, or any number of other subtle "mind tricks."

Grey Knights

The elite Grey Knights Space Marines Chapter that serves as the Chamber Militant of the Inquisition's Ordo Malleus, the Daemonhunters, is wholly made up of psykers: being a psyker is a condition for recruitment into the Chapter. Due to the entire Chapter being composed of psykers, the rigorous process for becoming a Space Marine is made even more difficult, as all Grey Knight Battle-Brothers have no memory of their past and many fail before their gene-seed implantation can be complete. However, the rigorous selection process and memory-wiping techniques employed by the Grey Knights to rid their recruits of those common human frailties that the Ruinous Powers can prey upon to corrupt an individual has proven extraordinarily successful, for not a single Grey Knight has ever turned to Chaos, despite their psychic abilities making them more vulnerable than standard Space Marines.

Eldar

Among all the intelligent races of the galaxy, the Eldar possess some of the most powerful psykers in existence, using their ability to divine the future to shape their fate while also unleashing devastating telekinetic powers upon those that oppose them; however, the sheer power they generate when they combine their psychic strengths ensures they must be cautious to not attract the attention of Chaos and the other predatory entities of the Warp. They are forced to become highly disciplined and regulated in their usage of psychic power. Eldar psykers come in the form of eitherFarseers or Warlocks, the former being the more powerful psykers of the two. Farseers will lead an Eldar warhost against the enemy and shape the course of battle with their powers. Warlocks, former Eldar Aspect Warriors who possess potent psychic powers because they have begun to walk the Eldar Path of the Seer, typically serve as bodyguards for the Farseers and possess lesser, usually defensive-oriented psychic powers. The Ulthwé Craftworld is said to possess the greatest number and the greatest quality of known Eldar psykers due to its proximity to the Eye of Terror. They can divine much further into the future and with better clarity than the Farseers of the other Craftworlds. The Craftworld Iyanden has a variant of Warlocks called Spiritseers. They differ very little from their normal counterparts, save to guide all of those Eldar constructs that are empowered by the souls of fallen Eldar encapsulated within Spirit Stones. Spiritseers will guide Eldar Wraithguards in combat, better directing those Wraithbone constructs' awesome firepower for optimum efficiency.

Forces of Chaos

The Forces of Chaos host a great many mutants among their number, including many with psychic potential. Chaos psykers, often calledSorcerers, can perform various tasks such as summoning daemons and unleashing devastating weaponised psychic powers upon the enemy. The Chaos God Tzeentch is devoted to sorcery; Chaos Space Marine Legionsworshiping Tzeentch such as the Thousand Sons possess a large number of psykers that can aid in battle. Other Traitor Legions such as the World Eaters denounce sorcery and psychic ability in favour of the wanton bloodshed of close combat. The Iron Warriors Traitor Legion often also sneers at the use of sorcery. Chaos Sorcerers can unleash potent powers and are fearsome individuals, often mutated beyond recognition. Tzeentch-worshipping Sorcerers are especially potent, able to perform feats that would leave even an Eldar Farseer making sure his Spirit Stone is firmly within his grasp.

Orks

All Orks are relatively powerful latent psykers, however they do have true, active psykers known as Weirdboyz. Ork psykers differ from those of the other races in that they do not draw their power individually and directly from the Warp, but instead indirectly from the latent, collective psychic powers that all Orks possess. The Weird Boyz then channel this so-called WAAAGH! energy to inflict damage upon their foes, but often end up killing themselves in the process.

Necrons

The Necron cannot make use of psykers because, though a once-living race, they chose to have their living consciousnesses interred by the C'tan into Necron constructs for immortality at the cost of their souls. Since a soul is simply an individual's psychic imprint on the Immaterium, the Necrons are no longer capable of accessing its psychic power. The Necrons are now living machines, beings of pure material like their masters who leave no impression on the Immaterium. The C'tan are described as creatures entirely born of the material realm, and thus they cannot sense or influence the Warp in any way. Thus they hate and fear the Immaterium and all things strongly connected to or influenced by it such as psykers. The Necrons are notable for utilising technology specifically designed for destroying psykers, most prominently the Pariahs. Necron Pariahs are an elite bodyguard that terrify any psykers in their proximity since no member of this group possesses a Warp signature and thus a soul. These Necrons, all of whom were once human psychic "blanks," share the "pariah gene" in common with the Imperial Assassins of the Culexus Temple of the Officio Assassinorum, and both groups are the soulless victims of the insertion of the gene millions of years ago into the proto-human gene pool by the C'tan in the hope that they could be used as living weapons against the Old Ones and their psychic servant races like the Eldar. The C'tan would sooner feed off the thermonuclear power of a sun than deign to consume a single soul with its foul taint of Warp energy. Hatred of the psychic does not bar some contradictory evidence about the Necrons' use of psychic abilities, as seen when the Necrons emitted a fear-inducing telepathic ability, from which the Commissar Ciaphas Cain was saved only because of the presence of a "psychic blank" with the pariah gene in the vicinity.

Tyranids

The alien race of the Tyranids is one of the most psychically active races in the galaxy, if not the most, with every single Tyranid telepathically connected to all other members of its species through the psychic gestalt that is called the Hive Mind. It is suspected that this constant and massive "psychic traffic" is what causes the Shadow in the Warp, a phenomenon that makes Warp travel and astropathy almost impossible in the vicinity of a large TyranidHive Fleet. Though the lesser Tyranid biomorphs have no psychic abilities of their own, the larger Tyranid Warriorsact as focal points for the Hive Mind called synapse creatures, capable of mind-controlling all of the lesser Tyranids around them. Zoanthropes, creatures supposedly created by combining Tyranid DNA with DNA from other psychically active races like the Eldar, are extremely powerful psykers. Their bodies have devolved into little more than a humongously bloated head attached to an atrophied, fetus-like body incapable of even moving on its own power, therefore requiring the creature to use its psychic abilities to levitate across the battlefield. Hive Tyrant are also very powerful psykers, although not as powerful as Zoanthropes, and act as the core of the Hive Mind within the Tyranid swarms. Larger Tyranids, such as Dominatrixes and the mysterious Norn-Queens, are also psykers of immense power, though the full extent of their abilities is a matter of speculation within the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Tau

The Tau have no known psykers. In the video game Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior, it is revealed that the Tau are naturally resistant to the mutating effects of Chaos, having almost no psychic presence in the Warp at all, though they are not soulless like the Necrons. However, this did not prevent the Tau Ethereal, Ko'Vash, being blasted apart by a burst of Chaos energy. It is rumoured that the Ethereals are capable of utilising Warp power, as it is suggested that this is how they are able to cause such loyalty to the Greater Good in all of the Tau, although it has been discovered by Adeptus Mechanicus researchers that the members of the Ethereal Caste possess a large, diamond-shaped scent-emitting organ in their head which may allow them to control other Tau through the emission of pheromones.

Psyker Grades

There are different grades used to incrementally grade the power of a psyker within the Imperium of Man, ranked from the most powerful to least powerful, top to bottom:

Alpha PlusAlphaBetaGammaDeltaEpsilon

The grades continue on down through the letters of the Greek alphabet. Grade Sigma and below are levels of "anti-psychic power". Such people are more commonly known as "psychic blanks" since they cannot be detected, manipulated or affected by psychic means and possess the pariah gene.

The psychic power the top four grades represents is immense. A high Delta level can read the minds of all the people in a good-sized town simultaneously, or crush a man to death against a wall in seconds. High-grade psykers are extremely powerful, and not to be taken lightly. Beta grade is the highest level of psychic power that a human can attain and still be considered sane.

An Alpha Plus grade psyker, however, is a being of almost grotesque power. They are described as being able to "turn a man inside-out with a glance", "snap a Battle Titan in half with a flick of the wrist", and "a muttered syllable can turn an army upon itself in a frenzy of blood lust". They are capable of destroying entire worlds - sometimes unintentionally.

There is some controversy as to whether this description should be taken as an objective description of the Alpha Level of psychic mastery, or if it is intended to be read as Imperial propaganda, and just the exaggerated view of the generally anti-psychic authorities of the Imperium. The Alpha grade psyker Esarhaddon is powerful enough to control hundreds of Imperial citizens as puppets, but he is not described as being powerful enough to destroy a Battle Titan, and is eventually subdued.

However, there are very few Alpha or Αlpha Plus psykers that can be controlled safely, or even at all. Because more powerful psykers attract proportionally more interest from Warp-bound daemons, many are driven insane, tainted byChaos, or even become possessed (examples include the Apex Twins, who were responsible for murdering scores of Imperial Guard Regiments). They are one of the biggest threats the Inquisition has to face, and are one of the threats that the Ordo Hereticus was formed to combat. Most are executed, as the threat they pose is simply too great to deal with or control to any large degree. The Inquisitor Gideon Ravenor was known to be an Alpha Plus psyker, and the Emperor of Mankind would be considered an Alpha Plus, though in fact his power probably cannot be measured by any mortal scale.

An example of a Beta level psyker is Sergeant Agun Soric, an Imperial Guardsman who served in the Tanith First and Only Regiment. He is able to detect blood poisoning in a fellow trooper, but his most prominent power is his ability to write messages to himself, which are contained in a brass message shell. Even after throwing the shell away, he would soon find it wriggling in his pocket, containing a message written in his own handwriting. At first the messages contained advice or warnings, but soon began to include criticism as he began to realise what he was, and the danger he posed as an untrained psyker. He eventually admitted his abilities to his regimental commanderIbram Gaunt and is taken by the Inquisition's Black Ships. He was later revealed to have become the Sanctioned Psyker of the 51st Cadogus Armoured Regiment, and he was able to use his abilities to manifest from the Warp the ghosts of dead Tanith soldiers. Most notably, he created a ghost of the Cadogus Regiment's Major Berenson and his aide, who the First-and-Only thought to be a normal soldier rather than a Warp echo. Berenson was later "killed" in a Valkyrie crash. When Commissar Hark, who was also in the crash, told the colonel of the 51st Cadogus that Berenson had been killed, the colonel replied that Major Berenson's Valkyrie had actually been shot down _en route_to meet with the Tanith 1st five days before! Soric was later mercy-killed by Commissar Hark, but told Hark that what he had been using his ability to inform the men of the Tanith 1st that Colonel-Commissar Gaunt was still alive - he had been captured and tortured by the forces of the Blood Pact.

The Imperium has at times employed a different system of measuring psychic ability, where an individual's psychic profile is represented by a decimal value, presumably from 0 to 1, instead of using the Greek alphabet system.

Witch-Sight

Every psyker of every species possesses the ability known within the Imperium of Man as the Witch-Sight. Because psykers draw on the power of the Immaterium for their abilities, they can see the corona of psychic energy that surrounds every living being in realspace. For sentient beings, this means being able to glimpse the nature of any psychically unshielded person's psyche - their psychic "aura" in ancient Terran terms. Every psyker's mind interprets or experiences this information differently based on the nature of their own cultural and mental constructs. However, the one constant experienced by all is that people whose psyches are riven by the darker emotions and motivations appear in Witch-Sight as degraded monsters, while those of the opposite persuasion appear as pure or even angelic beings. Psychic Blanks are those rare individuals who possess no presence in the Immaterium and thus are immune to being affected by psychic abilities, such as those humans who inherit the Necron-engineeredPariah Gene. When seen by Witch-Sight, the perception of a Blank usually causes an adverse, almost painful reaction in psykers, since they do not possess an aura of any kind and therefore register as psychically disorienting. Eldar psykers are known to possess much more penetrating Witch-Sight than even the most powerful of their human counterparts.

Anti-Psyker Weaponry

Several types of anti-psyker weaponry have been developed by the Imperium, Necrons and other races to counter psykers. For the Imperium, these include the Culexus Assassins and their Psykout weapons, which have devastating effects on psykers. Weapons include the Psycannon, Warp Swords, and the use of other Necrons have developed the Cadian Pylons that, once their network is complete will completely separate the Warp from the material universe, thus rendering psykers powerless. On a smaller scale there are the Pariahs, Necrons made from humans with the pariah gene - this makes them, like the Culexus Assassins, soulless, and severely debilitating to nearby psykers. Lastly, the Dark Eldar, while not having any known psykers among their ranks, have developed weapons designed for psyker destruction to be used against their hated Craftworld Eldar counterparts. One of the most gruesome (and rare) is the Crucible of Malediction, a nightmarish device which contains the essence of a slain psyker tortured into insanity. When the Dark Eldar use this weapon, the psyker's tormented soul is released and its power has the potential to consume any psyker on the battlefield as their minds are overloaded by the psychic cacophony of anguish.

Forces of the Imperial Guard

In large-scale Imperial Crusades that usually involve large armies of the Imperial Guard, Guardsmen High Commanders are often found directing the Crusade effort from the rear, keeping with him representatives from the various Imperial Guard Regiments and the occasional Space Marine Chapter involved in the Crusade to keep in constant contact with the fighting components. However, when necessary, the High Commander may take to the battlefield with his aides and bodyguard, boosting his men's morale with his mere presence. High Commanders have a higher rank than other officers normally found at the front lines. A commander has the choice of which regiment to lead from the front, but they can be put into the major sections of all different types of Imperial Guard Regiments.

The senior-most officer of an Imperial Guard Company leads his troops as part of a Command Squad. This is the heart of an Imperial Guard army, from where the Company Commander can disseminate orders, execute the Regimental Commander's battle strategy and direct the actions of specific units. The Command Squads typically number five men - the Senior Officer and four of the unit's most competent troopers. They are often given additional training and equipment, enabling them to function as combat medics, vox-operators and other orderlies. A soldier who has displayed gallantry above and beyond the call of duty is often inducted into such Command Squads. This gallant trooper may be permitted to carry the regimental standard, a privileged distinction. The Guardsmen of the Command Squad are equipped with a variety of weapons from the Company's armoury - one carries the company standard, another serves as a medic, a third carries a portable vox unit, and the last soldier acts as the Commander's orderly/bodyguard. The squad may all be mounted in a Chimera. The officer is in continuous contact with his subordinates and coordinates attacks and provides a solid leadership anchor and can have advisers and bodyguards accompany him. The Company Commanders fight on the front line, leading by example, providing their subordinates a solid anchor of leadership.

Command Squads are sometime bolstered by the presence of Regimental Advisors, whose task is to ensure and better the coordination of the company (or the regiment) with the other Imperial forces present. There are three recurrent types of advisors: the first is the Officer of the Fleet, an Imperial Navy junior bridge officer who serves as liaison with any present Imperial Navy ship and coordinates air support and orbital bombardment manoeuvres. The second is the Master of the Ordnance, a junior officer who serves as an artillery spotter, and is trained and equipped to direct the punitive volleys from rear echelon artillery support. The third is the Astropath, whose instantaneous long-range messages allow for a quicker and better (re-)deployment of Imperial forces and ensure a rapid response to any unexpected development during a battle.

Even in battle, a Guardsman may need to be reminded of his duty to the Emperor to overcome his fear, and Commissars are often seen as the Emperor's personal representatives on the battlefield. Stern-faced and grim individual officers trained by the Imperium's Schola Progenium, Commissars are able to either inspire great deeds or strike fear into the hearts of Guardsmen. Either way, these emotions encourage the troops to stand their ground against an often horrific enemy and battle it out to the end.

Commissars are more than just a visible representative of theEmperor of Mankind. They also often take the fight to the enemy, battling against foe after foe to aid their units in battle. Their elevated status marks them apart from the standard hierarchy of an Imperial Guard Regiment's command, and they often operate as autonomous individuals, counseling and advising the commanding officer of a Guard unit. They have the authority to execute sanctioned psykersand Primaris Psykers if they are possessed by the dark forces of the Warp. If a commander or soldier is found wanting, or wavers in his duty to the Emperor, the Commissar has full legal authority to immediately execute him. It is this mix of extreme corporal punishment and courage that makes Commissars such effective boosters of Imperial Guard morale on the grim frontlines of the Imperium. Such is their reputation that in some regiments the wrath of the Commissar is more feared than the enemy.

The Schola Progenium teaches and trains orphans of Imperial Officers until they are ready to be initiated into one of the numerous organisations of the Imperium. Here, young orphans are schooled to love the beneficent Emperor. It is here that many Commissars find their unbreakable strength of their faith in the missionary orphanages. This orphans are recruited into the ranks of the fiercely loyal Imperial Storm Troopers. Commissars are often drawn from the ranks of these elite soldiers. Commissars are also drawn from the ranks of orphans of the Schola Progenium. They learn how to lead and fight in these squads at the Schola Progenium, working their way up to the rank of Cadet Commissar. As such, their training continues on the galaxy's battlegrounds where they are formed into special Commissar Training Squads, fighting alongside Imperial Guard units.

The Commissar-General is the senior Commissar of the regiment with the longest service and most extensive campaign experience. It is the Commissar-General's responsibility to select the most promising recruits from those recommended to him by the schools of the Adeptus Ministorum. After basic Imperial Guard training these become Cadet Commissars and proceed to special training for their demanding responsibilities as Commissars. The best way to achieve this is for the Cadets to be instructed under battlefield conditions. The Commissar-General assigns Cadet Commissars to these special training squads, who are then allocated to specific Imperial Guard officers according to his judgement of the battlefield situation. These squad members are identified by a blue uniform trim and Cadet badge.

A Commissar is then assigned to take the regiment's Commissar Cadets and form their own tactical unit. This Commissar Training Squad is made up of one Commissar and nine Cadet Commissars. The training of these Cadets Commissars has no fixed duration. A Cadet qualifies as a full Commissar on the judgement of the Commissar-General. He will be awarded his Commissar status as soon as he/she is deemed worthy of it by their actions. This newly promoted Commissars provide great inspiration to the other Cadets on the battlefield. The new Commissar can then be allocated Commissarial duties in his own right. Those Cadets who fail in their duties, but has not shown cowardice or insubordination, is relieved of his position and duties. These failed Commissar Cadets are often commissioned in a penal battalion. Others volunteer for service in a Rogue Trader entourage. Sometimes, their destiny will be decided by the Commissar-General or Commissar under whom the ex-Cadet trained.

The few Commissars who survive for long and demonstrate extreme valour and leadership may achieve the rank of Lord Commissars. The gallantry of Lord Commissars is legendary and tales abound of stranded, demoralised Imperial Guard squads being driven to valourous deeds by the leadership of such heroes. Lord Commissars exemplify power and bravery, making them natural leaders with a reputation for turning the tide of battle, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. Just being in the presence of a Lord Commissar drives Imperial Guardsmen to extreme measures of discipline and in may cases they have been lead without fear into the heat of battle. Lord Commissars are few and far between among the Imperium's forces, but they inspire their soldiers to acts of valour in a way no average Commissar can.

These fanatical members of the Ecclesiarchy and ministers of theImperial Cult follow the Imperial Guard on campaigns and battles preaching the righteousness of the God-Emperor. These Priests of the Ecclesiarchy play a vital role in the **Imperial Guard**, imparting holy teachings of the Emperor and providing spiritual succour to the troops both on and off the battlefield. To these followers of theImperial Creed there is no higher calling than tending the flocks of the Emperor's armies. They lead by example and gladly martyr themselves on blood-soaked fields of battle. They favour close combat over the use of ranged weapons, as they bring holy death to their enemies and they instill this ideal in the Guardsmen following them, making them equally as ferocious as a Commissar when it comes to motivating men, although they use religious inspiration rather than terror in the way most Commissars do. Ministorum Priests ensure that troops are sufficiently motivated to do their duty without fear, as well as fighting fanatically themselves. In battle they harness the faith of the troops to smite the Emperor's foes. They fill the hearts of nearby Guardsmen with righteous anger through their powerful and rousing oratory, chanting litanies of devotion and mantras of hate. Together they charge down heretics that dare oppose the Emperor, determined to purge such filth from the battlefield.

Tech-priest Enginseer

An **Enginseer** is a Tech-priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus whose specialisation is the maintenance and repair of the many technological instruments of the Imperium of Man, both in peace as in war. Enginseers are the most commonly seen members of the Mechanicus, for they are present wherever a somewhat technologically advanced human settlement reside. By virtue of the ancient Treaty of Mars, many Enginseers are attached to theImperial Guard and Imperial Navy, maintaining and repairing the Imperium's vehicles, aircraft, starships, and other wargear and ensuring that the warriors who prosecute the Emperor's wars always have the means to do so.

At the very foundation of the Imperium of Man after the end of theUnification Wars in the late 30th Millennium, the Emperor of Mankind sealed a pact known as the Treaty of Mars with the Cult Mechanicus, ensuring their lasting collaboration in exchange for political and religious autonomy. As a result, the Mechanicumbegan to train a large number of Tech-priest Aspirants as Enginseers, to ensure that the demands of the Imperium's war machine would be met.

Enginseers are engineer-mystics, fully initiated members of the mysterious Adeptus Mechanicus and its cult. They are highly trained Tech-adepts of the Cult Mechanicus and are dedicated to the maintenance of Imperial technology. Through many standard years of study they have gained the knowledge of the rituals and litanies that form the body of Mechanicus lore, as well as a deep understanding of the more practical disciplines of mechanics and electronics. Unlike most of the Priesthood of the Mars who remain aloof from Mankind and isolated on their Forge Worlds orExplorator Fleets, Enginseers can be found serving in almost every Imperial institution, and are often assigned to the Imperial Guard or other parts of the Adeptus Terra. The only exception is the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes, whose methods of warfare exclude any dependance on external assistance; hence they have their own "Enginseers" in the form of the _Frater Astrotechnicus_ or Techmarines. The main difference between the two is that a Techmarine is a genetically-modified superhuman loyal to both his Chapter and the Cult Mechanicus, while the Enginseer is a mere mortal and fully human member of the Cult. However, their missions are essentially the same, and if given access to the necessary technical data, a Techmarine could carry out an Enginseer's work and vice versa.

Conspicuous amongst the regiments of the Imperial Guard in their red Mechanicus robes, their bodies twisted by the numerous sacredaugmetics that bring them closer to their Omnissiah, the tech mystics of the Priesthood of Mars maintain the Imperial Guard's and other Imperial armed forces' vast store of weapons, fighting vehicles and other various and sundry war materiel. They command armies of Mono-task Servitors, and bear with them arcane tools, and possess an abundance of knowledge concerning the workings of the sacred machine. Always, they move among their regiments' armouries, soothing Machine Spirits, and ensuring that all proper obeisance is made to the Machine God.

Many Tech-priests carry incense burners and painstakingly prepared oils with which to soothe and prepare the myriad weapons, vehicles and other machinery of the Imperial Guard and the Imperial Navy. They serve all across the galaxy with the Imperial Guard at the regimental, company and squad level, and are expected not only to tend to the machinery, but also to take up arms and, if called upon, to lay down their lives in the defence of the Imperium and its Omnissiah. Enginseers are often directly in harm's way, and rush into the thick of battle to salve the Machine Spirits of a damaged Chimera or to bring their copious understanding of engineering to bear on enemy fortifications and armour, always to the great benefit of their Imperial Guard squad-mates.

Enginseers serve as field engineers and maintenance specialists across the galaxy, often in harm's way, as those seconded to the Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy will be called upon to make repairs on the battlefield as well as in the workshop. They are a common sight on battlefields with large numbers of armoured vehicles, and are often accompanied by a retinue of Servitors for assistance and protection. Although most Guardsmen revere their vehicles enough not to risk annoying an Enginseer by "tinkering" or outright adapting it, the modification of vehicles to fulfill a certain need is inevitable, much to the chagrin of any Enginseers present, for their work to ministrate and placate the vehicle's Machine Spirit will be made more arduous by the non-standard deviations.

Enginseer contingents also accompany the Mechanicus' mighty Titan Legions and the crews of the massive warships of the Imperial Navy, carefully monitoring these mighty machine's systems and entreating their ancientMachine Spirits to function efficiently with rituals of placation and maintenance. In the heat of battle, the Enginseers will ease the machine's pain, performing damage control and field repair procedures, keeping their charge functional and willing to fight.

Despite the respect they usually command among the units they are seconded to, Enginseers are not held in high regard among the Cult Mechanicus itself as their skills seldom contribute to the the Quest for Knowledge. As a result of their overwhelmingly practical knowledge, they are often viewed as lowly but necessary cogs in the workings of the Machine God's order.

A Tech-Priest has numerous cybernetic enhancements which aid them in the performance of their duties, such as when tanks and other vehicles need to be repaired under heavy fire or extreme time constraints. Many tech-priests have their lungs replaced with mechanical breathers or portions of their cerebral cortex replaced with cogitator (computer) circuitry to allow for easier interfaces with the archaic but advanced technology of the Imperium. Some of the more fanatically devoted tech-priests who worship the Cult Mechanicus have their blood replaced with a synthetic oxygen-carrying chemical substitute, to minimize the effects of wounds and injuries inflicted on the field of battle. Many Tech-priests choose to have the serpentine cybernetic servo-arms called Mechadendritesinstalled, as an extra limb is always useful for both combat and repair duties.

The tech-priest Enginseers are privy to the mystical secrets of the machine spirits that the Adeptus Mechanicus' Cult of the Machine God believes inhabits all Imperial vehicles and technology and they are held in high regard amongst the Imperial Guard's armoured companies, which are comprised primarily of tanks and other vehicles. However, in most Imperial Guard armies, the tech-priests are shunned by their fellow Guardsmen because of their bionic enhancements and cybernetic disfigurements.

Wargear

Enginseers seconded to the Imperial Guard often outfit themselves with cybernetic enhancements and protections to augment their survivability. These enhancements grant them protection similar to that of Astartes Power Armour. The Enginseers also carry an Omnissian Power Axe, the typical long-shafted, two-handed halberd-like contraption which is as much a weapon as a tool as a religious icon to the members of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Enginseers often make use of multiple robotic arm augmentations known as Mechadendrites that are connected to their central nervous system via the spine, and are used to assist them in repair operations. Alternatively, the Enginseer can opt to equip himself with a Servo-arm, which is more practical for heavy lifting and for self-defence.

Many Enginseers are also accompanied by a group of Servitors, who are either equipped with additional heavy tools to assist in repairs, or heavy weaponry if the Enginseer estimates that the safety of his ministrations cannot be guaranteed by the surrounding Imperial Guardsmen.

ElitesStorm Troopers

**Storm Troopers** are the elite special forces units of the Imperial Guard and the Inquisition. Trained from their youth by the Schola Progenium in the arts of war, Storm Troopers are, perhaps, the finest soldiers ever to serve in the Imperial Guard. Armed with their trademark Hellguns and Hellpistols, these soldiers take combat to the heart of the enemy with blinding speed and deadly precision. Their accuracy is aided by their highly-protective Carapace Armour's integrated targeting system. Equipped with the finest weapons and wargear in the Departmento Munitorum's arsenal, Storm Troopers are trained to carry out missions beyond the capabilities of the rank-and-file Guardsman. Deep strike assaults, reconnaissance, infiltration, sabotage, and airborne insertion are just a few of the special missions with which Storm Troopers are regularly tasked. They are the very best that the Imperial Guard has to offer, each man a perfect specimen of health and moral purity, forged by experience and training, not into a simple soldier, but into a one-man assault squad.

Storm Trooper Training

The Schola Progenium exists to adopt children whose parents died in the Emperor's service and train them to become the bedrock of the Imperium's defence and governance. The Schola's graduates are scattered across Imperial society: the Ecclesiarchy, theAdministratum, Adeptus Arbites, Commissariat, Adepta Sororitas, or even the Inquisition. However, for those who prove to be particularly martial and aggressive, the Schola reserves its most difficult and dangerous training. This is the instruction provided to the famous Imperial Guard and Inquisitorial Storm Troopers. Storm Trooper training begins immediately after the Schola Progenium's primary educational course but does not supplant it. After all, potential Storm Troopers are expected to be more than simply warriors. Each is expected to be both well-schooled in basic education and Imperial lore and history, and be unwaveringly loyal to the Imperium as well (something a Schola education works diligently to impart).

Although the vast majority of Storm Troopers are _Progena_, orphans trained at the Schola Progenium, at times a senior official of the Imperium (such as an Inquisitor) uses his authority to have an individual inducted into the Storm Trooper training course of the Schola Progenium. In these situations, the Schola Progenium's Drill Abbots make no distinction between a barely-teenage new recruit and a grizzled veteran with years of service, and any complaints those veterans may have are quickly crushed under the weight of training. When (or if) those recruits emerge as Storm Troopers, they are often removed from their squad and assigned to their patron Inquisitor, instead.

To be selected to become a Storm Trooper in this manner happens but rarely, usually after some act of outstanding courage and dedication. The candidate must show developed martial skills, a strong mind resistant to terror and panic, and a deep faith in the Imperial Creed. Naturally, the sponsoring Inquisitor has his own, often obscure, agenda for sponsoring an Acolyte into this training as well. Storm Troopers make excellent Throne Agents, often serving as an Inquisitor's bodyguard in extremely dangerous situations and they are highly valued for their martial training and military knowledge.

Often, such an unusual candidate is examined carefully by the Drill Abbot instructors before being declared fit to train with the Storm Trooper _Progena_. Rigourous study with the Inquisition is also required for the candidate in order to acquire the same knowledge already learnt by the other _Progena_ - this often includes a deep understanding of the _Tactica Imperialis_, advanced stealth techniques, and a method to ensure basic and successful communion with the Machine Spirits of their special wargear, such as digital targeters and Grav-Chutes. In most cases, the "proper" Storm Trooper _Progena_ never recognise the qualities of the outsider candidate, and prefer to remain aloof. The Inquisitorial candidate, after all, has entered the training from the sponsorship of a higher power, and many of the other _Progena_ will doubt his own personal qualifications for such an honour. Traditionally, the Drill Abbots stand apart from the social aspects of their charges, and provide the candidate with no more and no less instruction than that given to any other _Progena_. Many a grizzled Imperial veteran may find his pride difficult to swallow when treated no differently than a raw and untested recruit by the Drill Abbots. However, swallow it they must if they are to complete their training and fulfil the expectations of their sponsor.

Should the candidate survive the gruelling regime of harsh training, he is now an Imperial Storm Trooper. However, candidates sponsored by the Inquisition are not meant to join a proper Storm Trooper unit, nor to deploy with the Imperial Guard. Instead, these Storm Troopers, with their training complete, are taken by their sponsor to serve a higher purpose - a permanent place on an Inquisitor's retinue of Acolytes and Throne Agents.

Organisation

Storm Troopers form a single Imperial Guard regiment, which is unique in that it is a permanent unit, receiving a constant influx of new recruits to keep it up to full strength. By virtue of its members having been recruited from the orphaned _progena_ of the Schola Progenium, the regiment is made up of soldiers originally hailing from worlds across the Imperium of Man. With up to ten thousand men under arms at any one time, the regiment is also larger than most other Imperial Guard regiments raised from a single world. However this huge force does not fight in a single place; individual companies or battalions are instead sent to different war zones, and from there, individual Storm Trooper squads are spread among the other Imperial Guard regiments in a given war zone as required.

The Storm Trooper unit assigned to a warzone provides a core of elite squads, which are entrusted to carry out important missions requiring more training and initiative than possessed by the average Imperial Guardsman. Storm Trooper squads are effective at spearheading assaults into heavily fortified positions, infiltrating behind enemy lines and sowing confusion and panic. They are often dropped into the thick of combat from Valkyrie Assault Carriers, guns blazing before they even touch the ground. In some rare instances, several squads of Storm Troopers will gather for a mission which is intended to be an annihilation of a target, rather than a take-and-hold. This task force is referred to as a Storm Trooper Strike Force.

Storm Trooper recruits are chosen from the _progena_ of the Schola Progenium, where they have been raised and educated, and moulded into loyal and dedicated servants of the Emperor of Mankind. They are then taught to use superior battle tactics and the use of more advanced equipment than the average Guardsmen. The regiments to which the Storm Trooper squads are attached often regard the inimitably dedicated and better equipped Storm Troopers with a certain amount of animosity, referring to them by such names as "Glory Boys" and "Big Toy Soldiers." Regardless of the animosity or opinions of the average Guardsman, the effectiveness of Storm Troopers cannot be disputed, and even the most embittered Guardsman thanks the God-Emperor when a Storm Trooper squad appears to turn the tide of battle and save the day.

Several types of Imperial Guard regiments commonly employ Storm Troopers as part of their standard order of battle, including the:

Armageddon Steel LegionCadian Shock Troops (employ Cadian Kasrkin)Death Korps of KriegHarakoni WarhawksTerrax GuardTypes of Storm Troopers

Storm Troopers can be divided roughly into four different categories: Grenadiers, standard Storm Troopers, Inquisitorial Storm Troopers, and Cadian Kasrkin:

**Grenadiers** - Unlike standard Storm Troopers, Grenadiers are raised from the toughest and most skilled members of an already existing Imperial Guard regiment. This practice is normally found on highly martial worlds, such as Cadia orKrieg. Grenadiers are selected while they are still in the youth armies of the local Planetary Defence Forces or during their Imperial Guard basic training and are enrolled in special academies where they receive additional training. They are utterly dedicated to the preservation of the Imperium and follow an ethos of duty and honour that is both impressive and intimidating. Unlike standard Storm Troopers, who are looked upon with disdain by their fellow Guardsmen, Grenadiers are looked up to and seen as a model to follow and emulate, as Grenadiers are from the same world as the rest of the regiment. Grenadiers are often known by different names, depending upon the world they hail from, such as the CadianKasrkin, who are considered both a type of Storm Trooper and the Cadian equivalent of Grenadiers.

**Storm Troopers** - Storm Troopers are the closest equivalent the Imperial Guard possess to elite special forces; they act as shock troopers and commandos, conducting raids behind enemy lines and acting as the spearhead for later offensive assaults. Storm Troopers are recruited from the orphaned sons of Imperial officials and military officers from all over the galaxy - such as Planetary Governors or high-ranking members of the Imperial Guard or Imperial Navy. Raised within a Schola Progenium under the care of the Ecclesiarchy, they live a demanding life of prayer, study and physical exercise. This unremitting and punishing training regime hones their minds, bodies and skills to the very peak of human perfection. These potential Storm Trooper candidates are notable for their outstanding skills in the arts of war, but lack the iron personalities and charisma that would earmark them to become an Imperial Commissar or Imperial Guard officer or the affinity for space warfare that would make them an Imperial Navy officer. They are usually not from the same regiment or homeworld as those they serve with. Due to this origin, their superior wargear and training, they are often called "Glory Boys" or "Big Toy Soldiers" by the average Guardsman, who are jealous of their skill and access to specialised gear. Wearing highly protective Carapace Armour and armed with armour-piercing Hellguns, a single squad of Storm Troopers can be more dangerous than an entire company of regular Guardsmen.

**Inquisitorial Storm Troopers** - The Inquisition maintains a number of fortresses throughout the galaxy, both secret and known to the inhabitants of the Imperium. Inquisitorial Storm Troopers are used by the Imperial Inquisition to guard their fortresses and the Black Ships as they make their purity runs across the Imperium's sectors, as well as to augment an individual Inquisitor's personal forces with reliable and effective soldiers. Many Storm Troopers of particular skill are chosen to become an Inquisitor's Throne Agents. Inquisitorial Storm Troopers are selected from families with a record of unwavering faith in the Emperor and prior duty to the Inquisition. They are trained and equipped in a manner similar to standard Imperial Guard Storm Troopers, albeit lacking the rapid insertion and infiltration skills, as they are not expected to undertake such types of missions. Such activities are more often carried out for the Inquisition by the Officio Assassinorum.

**Kasrkin** - Kasrkin are the elite of the Cadian Shock Troops regiments and part of the Imperial Guard structure, dedicated to the security of the Fortress World of Cadia. Their name comes from the title of the heavy defended fortress-cities of Cadia, which are called "Kasrs" in the Cadian dialect of Low Gothic. Thus, the name of these units means the "City Kin." These are the elite of the already superior Cadian Planetary Defence Forces and are recruited while still serving asWhiteshields or recruits in the Cadian armed forces into the Imperial Guard. Their training is comparable, if not better than, that of standard Storm Troopers, of which they are the Cadian equivalent, and they are utterly dedicated to the preservation of Cadia, whereas Storm Troopers are indoctrinated to dedicate themselves to the defence of the entire Imperium. Kasrkin are highly trained in the use of numerous weapons and wear the more advanced Carapace Armour like standard Storm Troopers. They maintain a strict ethos of duty and honour and a devotion to the Emperor that is impressive for members of the Imperial Guard. Whereas the standard Storm Trooper is looked down upon in envy by most Imperial Guardsmen of the rank-and-file, the standard Kasrkin is looked up to with favour and respect by the other members of the Cadian Shock Trooper regiments. The Kasrkin are the ultimate defenders of Cadia from the enemies of the Imperium, such as the ever-present Forces of Chaos, and they lead the charge in defence of Cadia, particularly during the early days of Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41 when Cadia was invaded outright by the Forces of Chaos. To be a Kasrkin is to hold a position of honour in Cadian society, and all Cadians recognise this truth.

**Kill Squad Trooper** - Used to enforce execution warrants or when extreme prejudice is required, Kill Squads are comprised of the special forces of Planetary Defence Forces and represent some of the most dangerous formations that can exist within the organisation of planetary Enforcers. Though not true Storm Troopers as they serve a planetary governemnt and not the Imperium, the troops that comprise Kill Squads are often trained to the same eilte level as most Imperial Storm Troopers, particularly on wealthy and technologically advanced Imperial planets. On some worlds, where the rule of the Planetary Governor is dictatorial and harsh, Kill Squad Troopers are the hated embodiments of their tyranny

Wargear

Storm Trooper Carapace Armour - Carapace Armour is generally a sign of status and is mostly worn by Imperial officers and agents. Made from moulded plates of armaplas, ceramite, or other strong, light but highly resistant materials, it can cover the entire body or just selected regions of the body depending on the desired level of protection. Storm Troopers, for example, wear full-body suits of Carapace Armour, including a helmet, while most Imperial Guard soldiers are lucky to gain access to just a simple chestplate of Carapace Armour to wear over more comfortable mesh or flakweave suits. Some bodysuits have slots designed for simple carapace plates to be inserted in, so that the overall suits can be rapidly configured for as much or as little protection as desired. Damaged plates can in this way be more easily replaced without requiring the purchase of an entire new Guard Fatigues - Storm Troopers generally wear the common battledress uniform or fatigues that are standard to their attached regiment beneath their

Carapace -Bead - A micro-bead or comm-bead is a short-range radio wave communication device worn in the ear, good for communications out to about one kilometre (depending on weather conditions and the intervening terrain). Each fits discretely in the ear, with higher craftsmanship models nearly undetectable in casual - A simple breathing mask that covers the nose and mouth or entire face, these offer much better protection than filtration plugs and are used by Storm Troopers in toxic environments or during attacks by chemical or even biological

Lasgun (Lucius Pattern) - Sometimes also known as Hellguns, "hot-shot" weapons are almost exclusively used by high-ranking Imperial officers and elite forces who favour the higher power provided by these weapons over the higher rate of fire but poorer penetration power of the Imperial Guard's standard-issue laser weapons. While Hellguns are rarely seen employed in the Imperial Guard outside of the elite Storm Trooper units, Hellpistols can be seen in use among many members of the Guard's officer corps and among agents of the Inquisition where their greater power often means the difference between life and death.

4 Charge Packs for Hotshot Lasgun - Charge packs are powerful batteries used almost exclusively by Imperial laser weapons. The cost of a charge pack varies depending on the class of the weapon. In all cases, it provides shots equal to the weapon's full clip

Knife - This one-handed melee implement is the ubiquitous back-up weapon for warriors all across the Imperium, be they lowly hive scum or the elite soldiers of a Planetary Governor. Some, such as the Catachan Fighting Knife, are designed for a specific purpose, whilst others are more generic in nature.

_**Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer**_ - A standard-issue Imperial text that covers a vast variety of topics, this book is possessed by all members of the Imperial Guard as part of their standard-issue equipment. The_Primer_ is a basic guide that details everything a Guardsman needs to know: principles and regulations of the Imperial Guard, issued arms, attire, apparatus, and equipment, basic battlefield policy and Imperial Guard organisation and structure, elementary battlefield medical instructions, and a detailed guide on the foes of the Imperium. No Guardsman should ever be found without possession of a copy of the _Uplifting Primer_, for the punishment is severe. The _Primer_ is a basic guide to life in the Imperial Guard and the tactics employed by its regiments. Even elite Imperial troops like Storm Troopers often times still rely on its advice.

Ogryn

The Ogryns are the toughest and largest soldiers commonly used by the regiments of the Imperial Guard. Originating from cold, barren, high-gravity prison planets settled many millennia before the founding of the Imperium of Man, the Ogryns' distant ancestors were once normal humans during the Dark Age of Technology. Thousands of years in the harsh terrains and brutal living conditions of their prison worlds, after the start of the Age of Strife caused the fall of the first interstellar civilisation of Mankind, forced their ancestors' bodies to adapt to their hostile environment.

Biological Characteristics

The adaptation to the high-gravity environment described above is the reason for the Ogryns' thick skin, powerfully muscular build and resulting monstrous size. Though their adaptations led them to increase in physical size and strength, the Ogryns' intelligence declined to below average human levels. As the planetary conditions (barren, cold, harsh worlds with little food and long periods of starvation) that caused their mutation required only primitive survival instincts, part of their adaptation involved the loss of the ability for more complex intellectual thought since philosophical matters were unnecessary in an environment marked by starvation and a constant fight for life. Ogryns are said to be even less intelligent than some Orks. However, the truth is that their intellects did not actually devolve, but became much more _focused_ on matters such as survival. Ogryns are claustrophobic, which means that they can only with great difficulty be loaded into armoured carrier vehicles to be transported to the battlefield, and can only ride in vehicles if a commanding officer is present. As many as half a squad may be mounted on aChimera. This slightly slows their deployment speed.

The Tithes Chamber Notaries, sub. Planetary Census (Abhuman) is a sub-division of the Adeptus Administratumthat oversees the classification and recognition of stable Abhuman strains within the Imperium. Of these, forty-six types are now listed as extinct, and no records have been received of a further twelve strains for over a generation, suggesting that they too have died out or been assimilated back into the general population of Mankind. The status of the remaining fifteen Abhuman races is quite varied and there is permanent disagreement about their specific classification amongst the Adepts of the Tithes Chamber Notaries. The most noteworthy and contentious matter concerning the Adepts is the Ogryn matrix of Abhuman strains. This complex group is currently officially listed as seven distinct types (Alpha, Theta, Type IV, Type VIIA, _H.S._ _gigantus gigantus_, _H.S. gigantus cranopus_ and the mysterious Grey Ogryns), but many in the Chamber doubt that these are all separate subspecies, and yet another official revision of the classification is therefore pending - in a few standard decades.

When the Ogryns were rediscovered on their homeworlds during theGreat Crusade, the Imperial Army started recruiting the Ogryns into the Imperial Guard as close combat soldiers. Their recruitment was easy because they hardly need any training, as most Ogryn are quite capable of bringing down almost any enemy and their combat skills make them good assault troops. The Imperial Guard's officers also found that Ogryn are extremely loyal once introduced to theImperial religion of faith in the Emperor of Mankind. They are known to believe and do anything their leaders say and ask. They see the orders they receive as having come down the chain of command ultimately from the beloved God-Emperor himself. On the other hand, Ogryn are known for their inability to understand any complex commands and tactics. This simple-mindedness has also contributed to the big Abhumans' reputation as being notoriously easy to corrupt to the service of Chaos, particularly by the temptations of the Blood God Khorne. Many Ogryns, for example, fought on the Vraksian Traitor Militia side in theSiege of Vraks.

Their skin is extremely thick and Ogryn can ignore wounds that would cripple or kill a normal man. As they are brutal and direct, they favor knuckle dusters and knives for close combat. They are issued special, large auto-shotguns known as Ripper Guns, for shooting and clubbing. Frag grenades are also popular among Ogryn.

Although possessing extremely low intelligence, some Ogryn may have a slightly higher level of intellect than others. This boosts their chances to be chosen as candidates for the Biochemical Ogryn Neural Enhancement procedure, also known as BONE; which raises their intelligence further. These relatively smart Ogryn are given the title **Bone'eads**, and as they are able to understand more complex orders they are placed in command of a squad of normal Ogryns.

Ratling

A **Ratling **(_Homo sapiens minimus_) is a member of a small, loud, hungry and lecherous Abhuman species. Ratlings are granted full Imperial citizenship despite their mutant status and in the past have often served in the Regiments of the Imperial Guard. However, they are still distrusted by the more Puritanical members of theInquisition.

The Imperial world known as Ornsworld, also referred to as Orn's World, is the primary Ratling homworld located in the Segmentum Obscurus. Ratlings are the smallest type of Abhuman known to the Imperium, their ancestors having become stunted by thousands of years of inbreeding on worlds with climates and environments even more conducive to human life than ancient Terra and abundant harvests. Ratlings are short and squat, although not strong when compared to normal, baseline humans. They are idle, hedonistic, gregarious, over-friendly and sexually promiscuous. Their lives are spent eating until sick, drinking copious amounts of intoxicating beverages, and procreating uncontrollably, almost like Abhuman rabbits. These small, loud, hungry and lecherous creatures are called Runtlings, Stunties, Halflings and Ratlings by other humans, among other, less printable things.

The Gothic War

In 139.M41, Abaddon the Despoiler launched his 12th Black Crusade, also called the Gothic War. This was a vast military campaign against the Imperium of Man which would last until 160.M41. During the initial outbreak of hostilities, Ornsworld was subjected to a massive invasion by the Forces of Chaos in search of the malefic artefact known as the Eye of Night, which consisted of an embedded statue of ancient antiquity worshiped as a god by the Ratlings in the pre-Imperial era. Initially, the Chaos forces were driven back by the Imperial Guard forces, but a month later the Chaos vessels blockaded Ornsworld, launching a full-scale invasion. Millions of Ratlings died in the ensuing slaughter. Eventually, the Chaos forces found what they were looking for and departed with the Chaotic artefact.

Siege of Haupstemmler Keepp

A sad chapter in the invasion of Ornsworld, occurred during the Siege of Hauptstemmler Keep, the last bastion of Ratling defiance during Abaddon's invasion of the Ratling homeworld. A great many Chaos Sorcerers gathered to breach the walls of the mighty edifice. Combining their eldritch powers, they created a penetratrive vortex with which to smash the adamantium-clad gates. However, several of the Sorcerers mispronounced certain key words of the spell and it quickly spiralled out of control. The influx of Warp power detonated catastrophically, engulfing the besieging Chaos army and turning 3,000 of its warriors into gibbering Chaos Spawn. The explosion of Warp energy also levelled part of the north wall, much to the dismay of the Imperial Guard and Ratling defenders. The sea of mutating flesh that assailed the breach soon overran the defenders and the keep fell to Abaddon. Even now, centuries later after Abaddon left the world, rogue Chaos Spawn from the siege have to be trapped and killed by the Ratlings in summer beast hunts.

Ornsworld Massacre

In 999.M41, Ornworld came under attack once again from the Chaos Space Marines known as the Knights of Blood. In a cruel repetition of the horrors inflicted during the Gothic War centuries earlier, over ninety percent of its population was massacred before Imperial Guard reinforcements arrived to bolster the beleaguered planet's Ratling defenders.

Ratlings serve in the Imperial Guard as cooks, a skill they no doubt learned in order to feed their own ample stomachs, and also tend towards kleptomania, as Commissars report petty theft and illegal gambling rings increase substantially when Ratlings are attached to an Imperial Guard platoon or regiment. Ratlings have also been known to supply non-standard weaponry to Guardsmen willing to pay a premium.

Though unsuited for many battlefield roles, Ratlings make excellent snipers, even without the telescopic laser-sights of the needle-rifles. With careful, methodical aim, the Ratlings place their crosshairs, targeting the vulnerable eyes of alien beasts or the exposed joints of armoured foes. They snipe enemy commanders and tank crews with contemptuous ease, amused at the panic and confusion they wreak. In battle, Ratlings excel at infiltrating the warzone unseen, secreting themselves wherever there is cover, whether it be amongst the undergrowth of a forest world, the craters of bomb-scarred tundra or within the twisted remnants of a ruined building. Any position that has a commanding field of fire will do, and one which reduces the possibility of any actual combat is even better.

Many Ratlings serve as snipers in Imperial Guard regiments, a role in which they excel due to their superior marksmanship. While they are often the butt of soldier's jokes, more than one Imperial Guard unit has had cause to be grateful for the covering fire of a unit of Ratling Snipers. As well as making excellent marksmen, Ratlings have a well-deserved reputation for being brilliant cooks. In many units they perform both functions. Their love of food is well known, despite their diminutive size, they tend to eat almost twice the ration allowance of a regular trooper. It is not unknown for some more unscrupulous Ratling entrepreneurs to offer their foster regiment obtained goods of every stripe and desire. They do not limit their black-marketing to food stores alone as many veteran troopers obtain much of their non-standard issue weaponry courtesy of 'the chef's special'.

Imperial Guard Troop TypesGuardsmen

Found in every single Imperial Guard Regiment, the Guardsman is the ubiquitous representative soldier of the Imperial Guard, as he makes up the very backbone of the organisation's fighting force. Armed with low-power laser weaponry known as lasguns, a Guardsmen's lethality is minimal. Armoured with basic Flak armourfabricated from basic metallic alloys, they have little protection in comparison with the Adeptus Astartes and the other intelligent species' front-line warriors. Instead of cybernetic upgrades, daemonic Chaos powers or biological weapons, the Guardsmen face up to the universe's unimaginable horrors with nothing more than a las rifle in their hands and the fire in their bellies. Guardsmen are used differently by their regiment, depending on their commanding officer's preferences. Some regimental commanders choose to use the near-limitless number of Guardsmen like water on rocks - maximum casualties, but a slow and sure victory. Others prefer a sledgehammer style - an enemy will always fall under a volley of a thousand lasguns. Others just use the Guard like flesh shields - force the enemy through the human meat grinder until it works no more. However they are used, the Guard always maintains its faith in victory no matter the cost, in the name of the God-Emperor of Mankind.

Infantry Platoon

The standard and most basic tactical infantry deployment of the Imperial Guard, an infantry platoon comprises 1 command squad lead by a junior officer and their staff, 2-5 infantry squads and 0-5 heavy weapon squads, 0-2 special weapon squads, and 0-1 conscript platoons.

Platoon Command Squad

The Platoon Command Squad provides the first link in the chain-of-command within Imperial Guard Regiments. For battlefield operations to perform smoothly the Imperial Guard operates by using a substantial command structure. The Platoon Command Squad provides the command-and-control necessary for effective combat operations. The officer who lead Platoon Command Squads are known by a variety of official ranks and titles; lieutenant, marshal and shield-centurion are just a few examples. Their primary role is to ensure the platoon fulfills the Company Commander's orders and gets the job done. It is their duty to ensure that their most basic unit of the Guard fights effectively on the battlefield. Sadly, for every fresh-faced officer whom performs valiantly there is another that panics and falters and is quickly punished by a neighbouringCommissar for wasting the time and countless lives of the Guard. The Platoon Commanders are accompanied by this hand-picked team who help them fulfill their duties. The Platoon Command Squad consists of a junior officer and his personal staff of non-commissioned officers (NCOs). They may be chosen for their medical skills, their skill with special weapons or their potential to ultimately become an officer. These squads coordinate and plan their platoon's movement and actions. Troopers within these squads are chosen for their courage and may be given the honour of carrying the platoon standard. Others are chosen for their technical or medical skills. A select few are individuals that are thought suitable for officer training. Troopers assigned to a Command Squad not only assist in relaying the officer's orders but also gain first-hand leadership experience.

Infantry Squads

The main body of men and women fighting in the Imperial Guard are organised into infantry squads. These squads do everything that is required in combat and do most of the dying until the enemy is defeated. Infantry squads form the backbone and the heart and soul of the Imperial Guard. The fighting ability of each regiment reflects the world and society it comes from. Some planets specifically breed and train men as soldiers which are ultimately handed over to the Imperial Guard by the planetary government as part of their world's Administratum tithe. They are given a Lasgun and Flak Armour, and sent into battle. They can comprise small units or can be brought together to form a formidable swarm of men. A regular Imperial Guard infantry squad is composed of 10 soldiers, led by a non-commissioned officer who holds the rank of Sergeant. Often, one of the more experienced troopers of the squad will wield a specialist's weapon to add to his comrades' firepower; be it aFlamer, Sniper Rifle, Grenade Launcher, Plasma Gun or Meltagun. Squads are formed up into platoons, regrouping from two to five squads under the command of an officer with the rank of Lieutenant and his own platoon command squad.

Heavy Weapon Teams

Although some Guardsmen are equipped with a variety of powerful and specialised weaponry, the primary strength of the Guard's infantry regiments remains their huge and expendable mass of firepower. The massed firepower of an Imperial Guard regiment is what makes it a deadly opponent, despite the relative weakness of every individual Guardsman. Some opponents, especially enemy armoured vehicles, can easily shrug off volleys of Lasgun fire, and require a different solution than what standard infantry weapons can provide. Dedicated Heavy Weapon Teams are the Imperial Guard's answer to all those foes who prove invulnerable to massed Lasgun fire. They are equipped withMortars, Missile Launchers, Heavy Bolters, Autocannons or Lascannons to offer long-range fire support or anti-armour support to regular Guardsmen. Unleashing a torrent of indiscriminate firepower, a Heavy Weapons Team can reduce the packed ranks of the enemy to a pile of bleeding corpses in the time it takes to pull the trigger. Those soldiers who demonstrate an affinity with specialised weaponry are gathered together into squads within a heavy weapons company. Generally, these teams are made up of two soldiers who crew a heavy weapon - one crewman fires whilst the other hauls and loads the ammunition. Placed under the command of an officer, a Heavy Weapons Team boosts the firepower of individual squads, allowing them to engage enemy armoured units or hold off alien hordes that outnumber them many times over.

Conscript Platoons ("Whiteshields")

Conscript platoons consist of normal Imperial citizens with little or no military training, new Guard recruits who have not yet entered training, children of an already extant regiment's troops or Guardsmen that have not yet completed their training. Sometimes, in military emergencies, the Imperium's need for manpower is so great that normal Imperial citizens will simply find themselves conscripted by their local Imperial Guard regiment. These conscripts are officially designated in the military hierarchy as Probitors, but are better known by a variety of nicknames, the most common moniker being "Whiteshield." This name is derived from a Cadiancustom in that these Probitors show no regimental, company or platoon markings until they have earned the right to do so after facing their first combat test on the battlefield. Then they will be able to display their regimental colours or the heraldry of their fathers. Their only identifying insignia before this is the display of a single white helmet stripe. These reckless cadets are eager to prove their courage and earn the title of "Guardsman." To them this is more than a simple promotion, this is considered a rite of passage for many amongst the Probitors, marking their entry into adulthood, particularly if they are Cadians who have spent their entire lives preparing to enter the military service of the Imperium. "Whiteshields" continue to perform menial and support duties, but combat training takes up an increasing proportion of their time, until they are judged ready for action. Finally, they get a chance to prove their mettle in combat and to demonstrate that they are worthy of becoming true warriors of the Emperor.

Only those Whiteshields who distinguished themselves in battle are allowed to become Guardsmen proper. Some regiments merely demand that a Whiteshield take part in a battle without giving way to fear. Others only accept those who have drawn blood or killed an enemy, sometimes requiring the young soldier to collect a grisly trophy to prove his claim. After they have shown their worth, the Whiteshield has his blank, white helmet badge ceremoniously replaced with the regimental number and colours of his platoon; they take the shoulder motif of their company, and the helmet markings of the squad to which they are newly assigned. These rituals vary widely, as they are taken from the regiment's homeworld culture. Tattoos and ritual scarification are common and receiving these marks without crying out in pain is as much of a test of the youngster's courage as his bravery on the battlefield.

Special Weapon Teams

Most Imperial Guard regiments maintain a separate support company dedicated to providing infantry platoons with troops armed and trained to fulfill a number of specialist roles. These six-man squads of specialist Imperial Guardsmen may consist of snipers and spotters, combat engineers with Flamers, or demolition experts offering a variety of special support. Sniper teams are used to target enemy commanders, whilst those armed with heavy explosives perform tasks such as destroying fortifications. Demolitions experts can carry either grenade launchers or a special Melta demolition charge. Combat engineers are particularly feared by the enemy and can clear out bunkers with gouts of lethal Promethium flame. Some of these specialists can act as anti-tank units using a Multi-Melta orPlasma Gun.

Veterans

These hardy soldiers are Guardsmen are members of squads and platoons who have survived grueling wars of attrition for years and even decades at a time. Inevitably, each company shrinks in size as casualties take their toll. These superlative warriors have been forged into lethal and efficient killers through their battlefield training. These Veterans are the hard-core of the Imperial Guard - the first squad in an assault and the last in retreat. They possess unmatched skills and the combat experience to survive. They are crack shots and can have several special weapons in their squads and have non-standard weapons not issued to regular Guardsmen. Many of their weapons are taken from their foes. It is rare for a Regiment to possess a large number of Veterans except for Regiments with elite soldiers like those from the world of Cadia or those who have had a run of unusually good luck or competent commanders. A Regiment that has been reduced to the point when there are just a few Veterans left are combined with a new Regiment in the hope that their skills will rub off onto the new men. Many of these Veterans may not be from the Regiment or even the same home world, and so may introduce brand new combat-tactics and an entirely different war-ethic to their foster regiment. Although technically these Veteran squads remain a part of the same rigid command structure, these grizzled survivors function best when allowed a certain amount of autonomy. Through their valuable battlefield experience and insight - they often employ unconventional, but effective tactics- such as the use of booby traps - that are not taught by the _Tactica Imperialis_. Veterans excel in all aspects of warfare, from close-range firefights to heavy demolitions work.

Penal Legion

Imperial Guard Penal Legions are formed by those individuals who have committed capital crimes against the Imperium of Man but have been given a chance to redeem themselves by the Adeptus Arbites with their inevitable deaths in battle as warriors of the Imperial Guard. The troopers sentenced to serve in the Penal Legions invariably have short lives. They must live under a tremendous burden of guilt - for they have not only committed crimes, but in doing so, they have also betrayed the Emperor. For those Penal Legionnaires who are genuinely repentant, the opportunity to alleviate this burden is fully embraced and many die on the battlefield in desperate attempts to atone for their crimes. In rare and exceptional circumstances, Legionnaires who complete their missions and survive may be absolved of their crimes and allowed to rejoin the ranks of the Imperial Guard. The ranks of the Penal Legions are made up of the scum of the galaxy. Their ranks are swelled with rapists, murderers, traitors, mutants, and psychopaths, contributing to their disreputable aura; nonetheless, nearly every century a particularly brave (or lucky) Penal Legion is awarded freedom for their years of service, and their sins absolved before the Emperor. This is the only hope that the Legionnaires' cling to as they bloodily die by the dozen, leaving behind the most violent and hardened of their number. Reprieved from the death cells because of some talent or uncanny instinct, these dregs comprise the most vicious, ill-tempered and unstable group of psychopaths and killers in the Imperial Guard. New Legionnaires of the Penal Legion have their heads shaved and tattooed with their unit insignia. Discipline within a Penal Legion is necessarily harsh, even by Imperial Guard standards. A blind eye can never be turned from those that would kill each other by 'accident' or design. The commanding officer or Custodian of the Legion has control of the detonator that is linked to the explosive collars that every Legionnaires' must wear after they join the Legion, and he can use it to kill any Legionnaire he chooses, showering those nearby with sanguinous gore in an effort to retain order. Penal Legionnaires are tasked with the most dangerous missions where their unorthodox abilities and unique skills are essential for victory. Though they are composed of the worst dregs of Imperium, amongst them are found some of the most skilled warriors of the Imperial Guard. Some of those who serve within the Legion want to die in battle and forget their disgrace. But often, its the toughest and most dangerous born killers that somehow survive.

Weapons of the Imperium

Lasgun

The **Lasgun**, also sometimes referred to as a **Lasrifle**, is a directed-energy antipersonnel weapon used by the military forces of the Imperium of Man, and it is the most common and widely used type of laser weapon in the galaxy. It is standard-issue for theAdeptus Mechanicus' cybernetic Skitarii infantry, all Imperial Guardinfantry and most junior Imperial Guard officers. Lasguns are reliable, easy to maintain and to produce, and are readily available on most Imperial worlds. A Lasgun has a longer range than aLaspistol, but is nowhere near as powerful as a Lascannon nor does it possess the rapid-firing qualities of the Multi-laser or the Hellgun. Though not as powerful as kinetic projectile weapons such as the ubiquitous Bolter, the lower cost of production, the lack of a requirement for ammunition production and resupply make the Lasgun the best choice for the large forces of the Imperial Guard. The Lasgun uses a small portable capacitor power pack to produce a focused pinpoint laser beam which is strong enough to take an ordinary human arm off with one shot but is not as effective against the more durable alien bodies and stronger types of personal armour. A Lasgun's beam also cauterizes the wounds it inflicts due to the immense heat given off by the shot. The Lasgun is effective when used _en masse_, but considerably less effective when used alone.

The Lasgun uses the same basic technology and operates along the same lines as other laser weapons, emitting a beam of highly-energetic, focused, coherent photons. The high amount of energy carried by the photons of the beam causes the immediate surface area of a target to be vaporized in a small explosion. It is a relatively unimpressive weapon when compared to many of the other high-technology weapons of the available in the galaxy, but it is capable of cleanly severing limbs and potentially even piercing the Power Armour of a Space Marine (but usually only through a vulnerable spot in the armour). Most Lasgun designs have iron sights mounted along the top of the weapon. It is powered by a small rechargeable power pack located beneath the weapon and in front of the trigger guard which can be recharged in a number of ways, including by sunlight. These power packs can also be "overcharged", a trick used by Imperial Guard veterans, which causes the pack to explode, turning the weapon into a makeshift grenade. This tactic is only used in last-ditch situations as it results in destruction of the weapon. Lasguns have numerous power settings for adjusting the power of each shot and to conserve power (resulting in a weaker laser shot fired). The weapon can be overpowered with a "Hotshot" laser capacitor pack, providing more powerful but fewer shots. The Lasgun mounts a bayonet lug, allowing the weapon to be fitted with bayonets or combat knives. The sniper variant of the Lasgun, known as the Long-Las, is the preferred weapon of the Imperial Guard's sharpshooters. The barrel of the Long-Las is extended to bolster the weapon's accuracy. The barrel requires replacement after every 20-50 shots depending on the power setting and cooldown time. For this reason, the Long-Las is outfitted with a "slide-lock" barrel, which is easily locked and unlocked from the weapon's housing.

The standard Lasgun pattern used by the Imperial Guard is known as the M35 "M-Galaxy" Pattern, first put into use in 2546.789.M35, although thousands of variant models, marks and patterns exist. The Cadian Shock Troops, for example, commonly bear the M36 Kantrael Pattern Lasrifle, originally manufactured on Kantrael as the name suggests, which is a weapon known for its sheer Catachan Jungle Fighters prefer the Mark 4Lascarbine, which has less cowling than the M36 and is therefore lighter and easier to carry in the dense jungle environs preferred by the Catachan regiments. Other common marks include the easily manufactured Mars and Armageddon Pattern Lasguns, the much sought-after variable power setting Triplex Pattern and the short-barelled, folding-stock models used by Imperial Guard mechanised infantry, tank crews and troops assigned to starship or space station details. Even more exotic are the intricately crafted heirloom weapons used by the troops of regiments of the Vostroyan Firstborn and the Accatran Pattern Mark IV, which is much valued by Elysian Drop Troops and other drop troopers for its compact size and accuracy at short range. Despite these variations, the main mechanism of every Lasgun remains the same in almost all regiments. This makes the logistics of supplying multi-regiment armies a much simpler matter for the Departmento Munitorum. Other variants of this weapon include the more compact Laspistol, the anti-armour Lascannon and the more powerful and expensive Hellgun. The Imperial standard Lasgun, as used by most of the regiments of the Imperial Guard, has many attachments including (but not limited to) several types of scope, bayonet, laser sight and flashlight.

The Lasgun and Laspistol are possibly the weakest weapons in terms of pure killing power of all the weapons in common usage by the Imperial military forces, and are widely and scornfully known by Imperial Guardsmen as "flashlights." However the true power of Lasguns resides in their massed, concentrated use. It has also been demonstrated that even a Laspistol beam is fully capable of killing an unarmoured target, slicing limbs off and, if fired into a target's eye, searing the brain and causing immediate death.

Despite its lack of killing power, the Lasgun remained a favoured weapon of many an Imperial soldier, for it has many redeeming qualities. It is a solid and rugged weapon that remains reliable and precise in almost any environment, and requires very little maintenance: a quick cleanup while mumbling a prayer to the weapon'sMachine Spirit after usage is all that is needed to keep it going for over 10,000 shots, after which the focusing crystals must be replaced, an action that requires the intervention of a knowledgeable Tech-priest. Unlike a Flameror a Meltagun, the Lasgun can be outfitted with a bayonet or used as a club at close quarters without risk of damaging the weapon, and it will never overheat with potentially fatal results for its operator like a dreaded Plasma Gun. Another redeeming quality of the Lasgun is that its power pack can be recharged by exposure to sunlight or by being put into a camp fire for a few minutes, ensuring that the weapon almost never runs out of ammunition, even on prolonged operations, or in situations where resupply is unlikely.

Other Known Lasgun Patterns

**Accatran Pattern Mark IV Lasgun** - Often employed by Elysian Drop Troop regiments, the Accatran Mark IV is a bullpup-style Lasgun with an integrated lamp pack. The lamp pack is powered by the same power cell that provides the Lasgun's ammunition, but the power draw is so small as to be negligible. The compact design of the weapon is due in part to the power cell's location in the stock. The smaller profile of the Accatran Mark IV is perfectly suited to the drop missions Elysian regiments often undertake, easily manoeuvred at short range or fired from the hip. Further, its lighter design allows wielders to carry other equipment in place of the extra bulk, which can be particularly vital for regiments that favour Grav-Chutes as a means of deployment.

**Bullpup Pattern** - Imperial Guard units focused towards aerial or vehicular deployment often utilise Lasgun variants that are designed to increase portability and minimise size. While many employ Las Carbines, other such units are unwilling to sacrifice the standard Lasgun's effective range. The bullpup design counters this by extending the barrel into the weapon's stock, as well as mounting the power pack within the base of the stock behind the grip. In this way, the Lasrifle achieves a balance between the compact design of a carbine while retaining most of the full capability of a standard Lasgun.

**Hot-Shot Lasgun (Lucius Pattern)** - Sometimes known as Hellguns, "Hot-Shot" weapons are almost exclusively used by high-ranking Imperial officers and elite forces who favour the higher power provided by these weapons over standard-issue las weapons. While Hellguns are rarely seen outside of elite Storm Trooper units, Hellpistols can be seen among many in the Imperial Guard officer corps and among Inquisitorial agents where the extra hitting power they provide over a regular Laspistol often means the difference between their life and failure to the Emperor. Hot-Shot weapons use a 10 kilogram backpack power source rather than a standard plug-in charge pack, even for the smaller Hellpistol. Larger power packs mean greater power behind each shot but make reloading more impractical, which is a trade-off most are willing to make. Hellguns can also be linked to larger backpack power sources.

**Integrated Lathe-Lasrifle** - Part weapon system and part bionic replacement, these integrated weapons give the Adeptus Mechanicus guardians of the Lathe Worlds in the Calixis Sector a clear advantage over most conventional forces. Each Integrated Lathe-Lasrifle is linked directly to a Potentia Coil, providing it with a near-endless amount of energy to draw from, and allowing these ancient weapons to deliver punishing volleys of fire without pause. Originally derived from an ancient archeotech design, the Integrated Lathe-Lasrifle packs a greater punch than a standard Lasgun. The standard weapon of the Calixian Mechanicus' feared Crimson Guard, Lathe-Lasrifles are fast becoming a more and more common sight throughout the Calixis Sector.

**Long-Las** - Favoured by Imperial Guard Sharpshooters, the Long-Las is a specially modified version of the Lasgun constructed for added range and accuracy. As its name implies, a Long-Las also has a much longer barrel than a standard Lasgun, sometimes being up to twice the length, which makes it awkward in close quarters.

**Lucius Pattern No. 98 Lasgun** - The signature weapon of the Death Korps of Krieg, the Lucius Pattern Lasgun operates in the 21 megathoule range, but is designed to draw from a standard Munitorum-issue power pack. Consequently, the Lucius Lasgun discharges a more powerful shot, but drains the power pack at a correspondingly increased rate. This also puts a great strain on the weapon, limiting the rate of fire and requiring such features as additional heat sink rings lining the exterior of the barrel. Even with such considerations, an over-taxed Lucius Lasgun can quickly overheat. The added danger of the weapon overheating does not perturb the famously stoic Krieg.

**M35 M-Galaxy** - The M35 M-Galaxy is the most common Lasgun pattern in production for the Imperial Guard.

**M36 Kantrael Pattern Lasrifle **- Standard Lasrifle used by the Imperial Guard's regiments of Cadian Shock Troops and the regiments raised from many other worlds that use Cadian wargear and martial traditions as a model for their own

**Mark 4 Catachan Lascarbine** - Standard Lasgun used by the regiments of the Catachan Jungle Fighters and considered particularly useful in dense forested or wooded terrain like that found on many Jungle Worlds across the galaxy.

**Mark III Lascarbine (with Nalwood stock)** - This is the Lasgun pattern used by the Tanith-born members of the Tanith First and Only**Mars Pattern Lasrifle **- This is the Lasgun pattern used by the regiments of the Jouran Dragoons.

**Mark IV Accatran Pattern** - This weapon is used mainly by the regiments of the Elysian Drop Troops and has also found favour with Drop Troops regiments drawn from other worlds.

**Merovech Pattern Assault Lasgun** - Designed purely for close range assaults, the Merovech Pattern Lasgun is heavily reinforced and has a bayonet built into its short and heavy frame. Slots for two power packs are included so the gun can switch to a fresh pack with no reloading. Since the firefights it is designed for are typically over long before two packs are exhausted, it serves its intended function perfectly.

**Necromunda Pattern Lasgun** - These Lasguns are manufactured on the Hive World of Necromunda **Number 98 Lucius Pattern Lasrifle****Retribution Pattern Long-Las** - The first Retribution Pattern Long-Las was reportedly a modified Imperial Guard issue Long-Las, constructed by a sniper belonging to a regiment of the Brontian Longknifes. Angry over the destruction of his regiment in bloody frontal assaults during the Fifth Battle of Koldon Gap, he deserted and proceeded to kill four of his former senior officers and five Commissars before his position was annihilated by a retaliatory mortar strike. In the subsequent centuries, similar weapons have been constructed by various artisans in the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse. The Retribution is a stripped down Long-Las, sacrificing some of the weapon's reliability and clip size. In exchange, the Retribution has a much shorter barrel (for easy concealment) and can be broken into half a dozen pieces that can easily be hidden within a specially designed pack. In addition, the weapon is rigged to fire in a non-visible light spectrum, decreasing penetration slightly but ensuring the Retribution's discharge is unnoticeable. Breaking down or assembling the weapon takes roughly 30 seconds for a practised individual. In addition, there is almost no flash or sound from the las-burst, making it extremely difficult to detect when the Retribution is firing via sight or sound.

**hotlas** - An illegal modification of a standard Lasgun popular amongst the techwrights and armour-mongers of the world of Footfall, the "Shotlas" is rigged to discharge more energy per shot, at the cost of beam coherence, with the weapon's shots swiftly losing power and becoming ineffective at longer ranges.

**Stutter-Las** - Another common illegal modification, Stutter-Las Pistols trade accuracy and reliability for rate of fire, charging quickly to unleash a hail of lasblasts. Though seldom as potent as the discharges of most las-weapons, the spray of light and heat is effective at close quarters.

**Triplex Pattern Lasgun** - A highly refined variant of the standard Lasgun, the Triplex Pattern offers alternative firing modes that make the weapon more versatile on the battlefield.

The following represent the standard specifications of an M36 Kantrael Pattern Lasgun as recorded in _The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer, Damocles Gulf Edition_:

**Service Designation:** Standard M-G short pattern Lasgun/Lasrifle

**Weight:** 2.3kg

**Length:** 900 millimetres

**Magazine Type:** 19 megathule range (rechargable)

**Type of Fire:** Single shot or fully automatic

**Rate of Fire (cyclic):** 220 shots per minute

**Shot Intensity:** low to high

**Sights:** adjustable, back and front sights with optional laser sight/integral opticsLas-Lock Weapons

A Las-Lock is an energy weapon that uses much of the same technology as a standard Lasgun or Laspistol, but more closely resembles a flintlock rifle. Las-Locks are, presumably, adaptations of present-day laser weapons technology that are used by less technologically advanced societies who have regressed from the modern day Imperial standard. Las-Locks are single-shot, with primitive capacitors that require the need to reload after every shot. While this presents many problems with the rate of fire, the single laser bolt that Las-Locks fire is considerably more powerful than those fired by standard Imperial laser weapons. Las-Locks are often seen in use by the occupational troops deployed by the Forces of Chaos when they seize an Imperial planet, particularly the law enforcement forces known as the "Excubitors". However, many Imperial Guard soldiers, especially those with an interest in archaic weapons, will carry Las-Lock rifles or pistols as back-up weapons.

Laspistol

The **Laspistol** is the pistol version of the Lasgun and like that weapon fires a coherent beam of energetic photons that can burn through most materials. The Laspistol is powered by a miniature power pack that is usually placed within the grip. The Laspistol is used most often by officers or Commissars of the Imperial Guard in conjunction with a close combat weapon, often a Chainsword orPower Sword. The Laspistol was specifically intended to allow the user to fire one-handed and wield a melee weapon in the other hand. The Laspistol is also a favoured weapon of Tech-priest Enginseers and Sanctioned Psykers.

The Laspistol is capable of producing the same amount of damage in a skilled user's hands as the Lasgun, yet it has drastically reduced range as compared to its variant rifle form. The Laspistol lacks the Lasgun's selective fire options, having only the ability to fire single shots.

There is little standardisation in the design of Laspistols across the Imperium of Man, and most human worlds produce their own unique versions. These designs are distinctive enough that they can be used by an expert to determine the pistol's world of origin.

Despite its lack of killing power compared to the more potent weapons of the Imperial arsenal, the Laspistol remains the favorite sidearm of many an Imperial soldier, for it is rugged, solid, precise, can be used to club an opponent without risk of damage to the weapon, requires very little maintenance, is not temperamental and will not overheat. An added bonus is that the weapon's power cells can be easily recharged by exposing them to sunlight or thrusting them into a camp fire for a few minutes, ensuring that the user is never out of ammunition for long.

**Accatran MG Variant Heavy Laspistol** - One of the many Laspistol designs produced on the Forge World ofAccatran.**Accatran Pattern Mark II Laspistol**- Another variant of Laspistol produced on Accatran, this heavy Laspistol design utilises the same power cell as the Accatran Pattern Lasgun. This pistol is standard issue to Imperial Guard officers and specialists, and is commonly used amongst Elysian Drop Troops regiments. The Accatran Mark II emits a more powerful discharge than other Laspistol models. In order to meet the needs of this power-hungry sidearm, the Mark II is designed to accept standard Departmento Munitorum Lasgun power packs. As such, the weapon is heavier than most Laspistols, but its destructive power can make all the difference in a close-quarters encounter.**Belasco Dueling Pistol** - While certainly lethal, Belasco Dueling Pistols more often serve as ostentatious displays of wealth and status than as field weapons. Most can only fire one powerful las-blast before needing a reload, but they are extremely accurate over longer ranges.**Hellpistol** - Sometimes also known as "hot-shot" weapons, Hellpistols are almost exclusively used by high ranking Imperial officers and elite forces who favour the higher power over regular laser weapons. WhileHellguns are rarely seen outside of elite Storm Trooper units, Hellpistols can be seen among many members of the Guard's officer corps and amongst agents of the Inquisition where the extra striking power they provide over a regular Laspistol often means the difference between their life and failing the Emperor. Lucius Pattern Hot Shot Weapons use a 10 kilogram backpack power source rather than a standard plug-in power pack, even for the smaller Hellpistol. Larger power packs mean greater power behind each shot but make reloading more impractical, which is a trade-off most are willing to take.

**Integrated Lathe-Laspistol** - Part weapon system and part bionic replacement, these integrated weapons give the Adeptus Mechanicus guardians of the Lathe Worlds in the Calixis Sector a clear advantage over most conventional forces. Each Integrated Lathe-Laspistol is linked directly to a Potentia Coil, providing it with a near-endless amount of energy to draw from, and allowing these ancient weapons to deliver punishing volleys of fire without pause. Despite being the smallest of the integrated weapons in standard use among theCrimson Guard, the Integrated Lathe-Laspistol is no less deadly than its larger cousin. It has a good rate of fire and decent penetrative abilities, but lacks the range of the Lathe-Lasrifle.

**Kantrael MG Defender Pattern Service Laspistol** - This Laspistol is standard issue to non-commissioned officers and officers in the regiments of the Cadian Shock Troops.

**Mark IV "Dervish" Laspistol** - The Dervish Laspistol was originally created by the Hox Conglomerate in theCalixis Sector as a viable Las-weapon alternative to the cheap and reliable ballistic slug-weapons produced in Gunmetal City on the sector capital world of Scintilla. Although the weapon never truly caught on amongst the criminal underclasses, it did find a market amongst those travelling to Frontier Worlds or other unexplored locations. The Dervish offers them a combination of reliability and power that is appealing to those who do not have access to a steady supply of bullets.

**Mars Pattern Mark IV Command Laspistol** - Presented to Imperial Guard officers when they attain company commands, these are high-powered weapons designed for carefully placed shots at longer ranges. They have an extended barrel and are slightly heavier than the Guard's standard service Laspistols.

**Triplex Pattern "Fury" Assault Laspistol** - This rare variant of Laspistol is most often utilised by elite assault squads and the Fury is the ideal weapon when facing a horde of foes. It fires in short bursts, designed to clear away enemies without slowing the advance.

**Voss Pattern Hellpistol** - Utilising advanced techniques of manufacture and internal gyro-stabilisation, high power "Hellguns" are the chosen weapons of the elite Inquisitorial Stormtrooper and Imperial Guard Grenadier forces. Costly and difficult to manufacture, the primary source for these weapons in the Calixis Sector is the Takara Fane of Gunmetal City on the world of Scintilla. Hellguns and even their pistol counterparts are far more energy-hungry than standard Las Weapons and are fed from power capacitor backpack units. They may use standard Las weapon charge packs in place of the backpack, but then consume four charges per shot.

Hellgun

A **Hellgun** is a pattern of Imperial Lasgun that possesses a more advanced and powerful laser plasma generation system intended to provide more energetic laser fire on-target. This makes the Hellgun superior in both range and power output compared to the standard-issue Lasgun. However, the higher power output requires superior quality power cells or the use of a separate backpack power supply, and the more complex inner workings of the weapon require more time and resources to manufacture than the standard Lasgun. This makes it more costly to field and so it is not generally issued to the average soldier of Imperial Guard regiments. However, Storm Troopers (including Cadian Kasrkins) and Imperial Guard Grenadiers are always equipped with a Hellgun as a standard weapon to take full advantage of their superior training and weapons expertise.

Imperial Guard Storm Troopers normally wear a large backpack which contains the separate power source required to provide the increased damage output for both Hellpistols and Hellguns. Like the standard Lasgun, the Hellgun can operate in either a semi-automatic mode, where it fires one shot per trigger pull, or as a fully automatic weapon in which it unleashes a continuous stream of laser fire for as long as the weapon's trigger is depressed. The Hellgun shares the same technology used in the Hellpistol. The Hellgun is slowly being replaced in the Imperial Guard by the more advanced Hotshot Lasgun whose beams are capable of piercing even Power Armour, which the Hellgun is not. The standard pattern of Hellgun currently used in the Imperial Guard is the Hellgun Mark II, which is gyro-stabilised and requires the use of the backpack-mounted power source to be effective.

Hellpistol

The **Hellpistol** corresponds to the Laspistol the same way theHellgun corresponds to the Lasgun - it is a more deadly weapon and only slightly heavier than the Laspistol. However, it is also more expensive in terms of the materials and manpower required to manufacture it. Hellpistols are usually found in the company of eliteImperial Guard Grenadier or Storm Trooper Sergeants, although higher-ranking Imperial Guard officers also have access to this weapon by virtue of their higher grade. Storm Troopers normally wear a large backpack which contains the power source required to provide the increased damage output of both Hellpistols and Hellguns.

These weapons hit harder and cut through more armour than the standard Lasgun. Their prohibitive manufacturing requirements, reliance on bulky backpack power units, and less reliable nature keeps them from being issued _en masse_ to Imperial Guard regiments. However, Hellweapons (or "hotshot las-weapons" as they are also known) are still favoured by the Imperial Guard's elite Storm Troopers - as well as any number of agents for the Throne - as more powerful versions of the standard Laser Weapons favoured by the Imperial armed forces. For example, within the Calixis Sector, Calixian Storm Trooper companies prefer to equip their forces with the Cadian Pattern Hellweapons. Constant warfare means these weapons have been enhanced to the point that they can cut through something as tough as Astartes Power Armour, making them extremely popular on the front lines.

While Hellguns are rarely seen in the Imperial Guard outside of elite Storm Trooper units, Hellpistols can be seen among many of the officer corps and Inquisitorial agencies where the extra power they provide over a standard Laspistol often means the difference between the life of an Inquisitor and his or her failure of the Emperor of Mankind's trust. Storm Troopers normally wear a large backpack which contains the power source required to provide the increased damage output of Hellpistols and Hellguns. Like other Laser Weapons, the Hellpistol will cauterize any wound it creates and so it is sanctioned by the Commissariat for use as an execution weapon by Imperial Guard Commissars for use on those troopers and officers of the Guard who fail to perform their duty to the Emperor. Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed of Cadia is known to carry two custom-made Hellpistols at all times.

The standard Laspistol can be considered a semi-automatic weapon in which one pull of the trigger produces one shot, whilst the Hellpistol is fully automatic in the sense that it will continuously fire high-powered las beams as long as the trigger is depressed. Most Hellpistols are handcrafted weapons rather than the products of Forge Worldassembly lines and have seen standard decades or even centuries of use in which they are passed down from user to user. For this reason, a Hellpistol is always considered to be the property of the Imperial Departmento Munitorumand not its current wielder.

Hotshot Lasgun

A **Hotshot Lasgun** is an Imperial Guard anti-personnel weapon that fires a much more powerful laser beam than that of the standard-issue Lasgun. The Hotshot Lasgun is powerful enough even to penetrate heavy armour like a Chaos Space Marine's Power Armour. The Hotshot Lasgun is issued to Imperial Guard Storm Trooper units and in its smaller, less powerful Laspistol form to Storm Trooper Sergeants and high-ranking Imperial Guard or Imperial Navy officers. Hotshot Lasguns are replacing the outdated Hellgun, which require an external backpack-based power source to supply their large energy needs. The removal of this backpack allows the soldier carrying the Hotshot Lasgun to carry a standard Imperial Guard pack or deploy by Grav-Chute, adding versatility and manoeuvrability to the Storm Troopers equipped with these weapons. All Storm Trooper units issued these weapons are also regularly supplied with a large amount of replacements parts, as the weapon is so powerful that its components often burn out under the stress of its use. Among their other skills, Storm Troopers are skilled at repairing and maintaining all of their weapons and are even capable of building their arms from scratch if the requisite components are made available. These weapons are considered the property of theDepartmento Munitorum which rarely entrusts these weapons to any Imperial Guard units that are not designated as the elite Storm Troopers.

Hotshot Lasguns require multiple advanced components to be constructed, including reinforced alloy barrels to withstand the greater heat produced during firing, thermal cooling cells to prevent the weapons from overheating, and gyro-stabilised power packs. As such, only a small number of Forge Worlds in the Imperium possess the technological know-how or requisite materiel to produce these potent weapons.

Lascannon

The powerful **Lascannon** is a formidable Laser Weapon whose energetic shot of coherent light is capable of penetrating most armoured vehicles. It is the favorite anti-tank weapon of the Imperial Guard and is also commonly used by the Space Marines. Its high strength and armour-piercing ability make it a formidable weapon and when it is twin-linked, it becomes even more deadly. However, it is very heavy and power-consuming, and must recharge after every shot, making it a poor anti-personnel weapon. As a result, it is usually installed on tanks or Sentinel platforms, and in the Imperial Guard, two-man teams are required to operate and carry around a single Lascannon. To accommodate the increased power output, the Lascannon has become the largest man-portable form of Las-weaponry, the barrel being several times larger in diameter and length than the standard Lasgun. Space Marines also make extensive use of the Lascannon; it is used by Devastator heavy weapon squads, Dreadnoughts, Predator Annihilators, and Land Raiders. The primary difference between a Lasgun and a Lascannon is the size of the weapons. While the Lasgun is easily handled by a single Guardsman, the Lascannon requires a special housing of such weight and bulk that it requires a two-man team to maintain and fire it. Due to their genetically-enhanced strength, individual Space Marines may carry Lascannons whose power sources have been integrated into their Power Armour.

Each Lascannon charge pack is good for only one shot before it must be replaced. This means it has a slow rate of fire due to the need to change the pack after each shot, and the packs cannot be recharged like those of a Lasgun. The power of the Lascannon's fire means that the barrel is damaged quickly by the energy discharge but can easily be changed, much like the Lasgun. Lascannons are very reliable as the technology has been perfected by the Imperiumover many millennia rather than scrounged from a newly rediscovered and imperfectly understood Standard Template Construct. As such, they are the preferred weapon type by many Imperial Commanders because the reliability of a weapon is most important when in combat.

Lascannons, due to their high strength and reliability, are often mounted on Imperial Guard or certain Space Marine main battle tanks. When used as a vehicle weapon, Lascannons are often twin-linked to improve their accuracy. Many tanks can have sponson or hull-mounted Lascannons to provide them with a secondary weapon to their primary turret in case it is damaged. Lascannons are a common sight amongst the regiments of the Imperial Guard, but less so in the ranks of the Space Marines, who rely more on Melta Weapons.

The Lascannon works in much the same way as the Lasgun, albeit with significant differences in practical operation that derive from the massive increase in power output. The Lascannon's beam produces a myriad of energetic side effects, including significant muzzle flash, more rarely seen in standard Lasguns, owing to the correspondingly greater power put into the laser emitter and consequent increase in plasma blooming. The beam is also incredibly brilliant, being purple or white in color; this is due primarily to the increase in higher-energy plasma in the air. It should be noted that some ChaosLascannons have been observed to fire blue-tinged bolts, which could be a combination of their age (most Chaos Lascannons date from before the Horus Heresy, and are therefore slightly less technologically advanced) and wear and tear from thousands of years away from Imperial maintenance facilities, both of which would result in a beam of slightly lower energy output and the resulting change in the colour of the beam in the visible light spectrum. Lastly, and perhaps most tactically significant, Lascannons require a far longer charging/cooldown time than Lasguns, which relegates them to an anti-vehicular role in most armies.

Lascannons are a part of the arsenal of many Imperial and Chaos armies, more so than the Lasgun; many armies physically capable of withstanding the recoil of solid-slug, ballistic anti-infantry weapons comparable to Lasguns (Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, etc.) still use the Lascannon as vehicle-mounted anti-armour weaponry, relying on its inherent accuracy and the lack of its need for ammunition, when compared to a missile system of equivalent damage. The Imperial Guard, which employs laser technology to a much greater degree than the Astartes, uses Lascannons to arm vehicles that do not need heavy cannons, like Sentinels.

Notable Lascannon Patterns

**Mark VII Mars Pattern Lascannon** - The Mark VII Lascannon is the standard pattern of Lascannon deployed amongst the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes.

**Godhammer Pattern Lascannon** - This is the pattern of Lascannon commonly used as a vehicular weapon on the Land Raider.**Icarus Pattern Lascannon** - The Icarus Pattern Lascannon is commonly deployed by the Imperial Guard and other Imperial armed forces as a defensive weapon designed to protect static positions.

**Hell-Hammer Pattern Lascannon** - The Hell-Hammer Pattern Lascannon is a pattern of Lascannon specifically sized to be carried by a Heavy Weapons Specialist of the Imperial Guard.

**Stormbringer Pattern Lascannon** - The Stormbringer Pattern is the type of vehicular-sized Lascannon deployed on the Space Marines' Predator Annihilator main battle tank.

Melta Weapons

**Melta Weapons** are a type of Imperial plasma weaponry that make use of a miniature fusion reaction to produce a blast of intense, searing heat. The Meltagun and Multi-melta (also known as "Cookers" or "Vape Guns"), as well as the grenade-like Melta Bomb, are formidable plasma-based directed energy weapons. Melta Weapons have a short range but are very powerful and their thermal blast's intensity increases as the distance to the target decreases. A Meltagun works by inducing a minute, sub-molecular nuclear fusion reaction within a highly pressurised pyrum-petrol fuel mix located within an ammunition canister, and then projecting the resulting plasma through the cannister and from the weapon's barrel as a blast of incredible heat. Melta usage is accompanied by a distinctive hissing sound as the beam boils away the water in the air, then a roaring blast as the beam reduces the target to charred scraps or molten slag. Meltas are the premier anti-armour weapons, and few if any armoured vehicles can withstand their power.

The heavy weapon known as the Multi-Melta resembles two Meltaguns fused together, with thermal beams that coalesce into a single powerful beam with a longer effective range than their smaller cousins. However, the increased size, weight and power requirements of the Multi-Melta mean that it is no longer man-portable by conventional human infantry.

The very rare pistol variant of the Meltagun known as an Inferno Pistol can vaporise foes of any kind with ease. Lord Commander Dante, the Chapter Master of the Blood Angels Space Marines, is the most notable of the few users of the Inferno Pistol in the Imperium, though among the Blood Angels the weapon is called the Infernus Pistol. Inferno Pistols are also favoured weapons, when available, of the Acolytes and Inquisitors of the Inquisition's Ordo Hereticusand its militant arm, the Sisters of Battle.

The Melta Bomb is a somewhat different application of the same technological principles. The reactive fusion fuel in a Melta Bomb has already been hyper-condensed and is no less devastating, designed to consume itself in a single burst of energy. The casings of Melta Bombs are usually designed with magnetic or molecular bonding mechanisms, allowing them to be clamped onto large targets such as vehicles or monstrous creatures. The surface contact detonation inflicts tremendous damage, easily turning even heavy armour plate into white-hot slag in a matter of moments.

MeltagunEdit

The Meltagun, also called a "Fusion Gun," "Melter," or "Cooker," is a powerful, short-ranged anti-armour weapon that produces an intense, energetic beam of heat in the tens of thousands of degrees Centigrade. The Melta Gun is used by the Space Marines, the troops of the Imperial Guard and other military forces of the Imperium of Man such as the Orders Militant of the Adepta Sororitas.

Multi-MeltaEdit

The Multi-Melta is a heavier version of the standard Imperial Meltagun, usually designed to project its intense blast from two closely-mated barrels. The Multi-Melta is also known, like other Melta Weapons, as a "Cooker" or "Vape Gun" and is a formidable anti-personnel and anti-armour weapon. Compared to other anti-tank heavy weapons in a similar size class, a Multi-Melta has a relatively short range but is very potent, and penetrates armour more deeply the closer it is when fired at a target.

Melta Bombs

The Melta Bomb is used by infantry in close combat, and is clamped directly onto vehicle hulls, or the surface of enemy bunkers, or even onto monstrous creatures such as the largest Tyranid bioforms. They are lethally effective against even heavily armoured units, as the intense directional blast of heat produced by the Melta reaction can burn its way through an armoured hull in a matter of seconds.

Colossus Bomb

The Colossus Bomb is a 10,000Kg heavy, Melta-based, guided bomb used by the Imperial Navy on the Marauder Colossus for high-altitude tactical attacks on heavily fortified enemy positions and fortified structures such as bunkers and more extensive subterranean facilities..

Inferno Pistol

An Inferno Pistol also called an Infernus Pistol amongst the Space Marines of the Blood Angels Chapter, is a small hand-held Melta Weapon that has an overall effective range that is only about 25% that of its counterparts, the Meltagun and the Multi-Melta. These rare and often exquisitely-crafted pistols are capable of cutting through almost any known type of armour.

Magna-Melta

A Magna-Melta is a heavy, vehicle-mounted, short-ranged, area-effect heat cannon. Magna-Meltas were originally designed for space assault craft to enable them to turn a large cubic volume of starship hull-plating into liquid slag. A weapon of this magnitutde's effects on less durable targets such as main battle tanks and living matter are simply catastrophic. The aptitude for use of this powerful weapon was not lost on the Tech-priests of Mars, who soon began mounting the Magna-Melta upon the turrets of Infernus Pattern Deimos Predators. This ancient pattern of Predator has now largely been replaced by the Land Raider Redeemer in many Space Marine Chapters.

Melta Cannon

A Melta Cannon is an Imperial Plasma Weapon that makes use of a miniature fusion reaction to produce a blast of intense, searing heat. This weapon system is commonly mounted on _Reaver_-class and _Warlord_-class Battle Titans, but also can be mounted on the carapace hardpoints of a massive _Imperator_-class Titan. A smaller version of this weapon system is also mounted upon the Devil Dog variant of the Hellhound.

Melta Torpedoes

Utilised by the forces of the Imperial Navy, Melta Torpedoes are even more feared by starship captains than standard torpedoes. Mercifully rare and extremely brutal, melta warheads detonate a precisely-organised series of melta charges upon impact with a target, burning through hull plating and consuming sections of the vessel's interior in a roiling conflagration. When used in orbital bombardment against planetary surfaces, they are equally capable of penetrating heavily fortified structures and incinerating the occupants and contents.

Auto Weapons

**Auto Weapons** are ballistic ranged weapons which use solid-slug ammunition and thus are the equivalent of twenty-first century military-grade firearms. They are found in pistol, rifle or cannon form. Auto Weapons are still popular amongst soldiers of the Imperial Guard; and the Autogun was the standard-issue weapon for the troops of the Imperial Army and the Imperial Guard until the start of the 32nd Millennium. While Autopistols and Autoguns are similar to their laser-variants (the Laspistol and Lasgun), Autocannons are very unlike Lascannons. Autocannons are rapid-fire ballistic heavy weapons designed to eliminate heavily armoured infantry or light vehicles, and are often used by the Imperial Guard's heavy weapons teams in battle, due to their versatility and reliability. There are also sniper rifles which use solid slug ammunition - although, like other Auto Weapons, they are restricted by their use of heavier ammunition. The advantage the Sniper Auto Weapon has over its photon-based counterpart is that fewer enemies will recognise the report of the rifle, as opposed to the Long-Las' distinctive ruby beam.

Auto Weapons are still used throughout the Imperium of Man and are similar in operation to twentieth and twenty-first century fully-automatic ballistic firearms. They use solid ammunition rather than the easily rechargeable power packs of the more common Imperial laser weapons, meaning Auto Weapons are more likely to run out of ammunition in a protracted battle. The strong point of Auto Weapons is that they use relatively basic technology, are inexpensive and are capable of being produced in large numbers even on low-technology worlds.

Autogun

The Autogun is an automatic ballistic firearm similar to a twentieth and twenty-first century automatic rifle in appearance and operation. Unlike the 2nd and 3rd Millennium versions, Imperial Autoguns use small calibre, high velocity caseless bullets which are made from metallic or synthetic materials encased in solidified propellant. An Autogun works by using a solid hammer and striker to ignite a sensitive chemical in the round, which in turn ignites the main charge and forces the solid projectile through the barrel. The reactive force of the bullet's expulsion, which may be assisted by gas redirected from the barrel, opens the breech and resets the hammer. The new round is then removed from the magazine and repositioned by the mechanism as it is pushed back into the battery by mechanical force. This cycle will repeat several times per second until the magazine is empty or the trigger is released, barring malfunction. Autoguns often find their way into the hands of all forms of planetary militia, some Planetary Defence Forceregiments, and are the standard firearm used in less advanced human cultures across the galaxy.

Autopistol

The Autopistol is a rapid-firing automatic ballistic pistol which is intended to be fired in short bursts. As the name implies, an Autopistol is the pistol version of the Autogun. It is similar to twentieth and twenty-first century machine pistols and submachine guns, sacrificing controllability in sustained fire, accuracy of the weapon itself, and projectile speed and weight for the purpose of making the weapon compact and light. Autopistols are still in use throughout the Imperium due to the fact that they can be easily produced on low-technology worlds. Some Imperial Guard regiments, including the 8th Cadian Regiment, often equip their troops with Autopistols as sidearms, improving their combat firepower. In other quarters, it is felt that only the Imperial Guard's officers should be equipped with pistol weaponry, so such equipment is reserved for Guardsmen of and above the rank of Lieutenant.

Heavy Stubber

A Heavy Stubber is a fully automatic slug-firing ballistic weapon based upon an old artillery design, and is fairly common and reliable. Its high rate of fire makes up for its lack of strength and armour-piercing abilities. It is an ideal support weapon for low-technology worlds that cannot maintain laser weapons in working order due to technological or resource limitations. Heavy Stubbers are often pintle mounted and used as close defence weapons on Imperial vehicles, when the rarer Storm Bolters are not available. It is often seen as a pintle-mounted armament on many Imperial Guard vehicles and is used for anti-infantry and light anti-aircraft fire. Some Imperial Guard regiments use Heavy Stubbers as heavy weapons for their infantry squads.

Ripper Gun

One of the few Imperial weapons intentionally crafted for use by the massive Abhumans known as Ogryns, the Ripper Gun is a short range Auto Weapon that fires several Shotgun shells at once to compensate for the poor aim of the average Ogryn. It is in essence a very bulky and sturdy Autogun chambered for the large-gauge shotgun shells. The Ripper Gun can fire either a single heavy shell or a hail of shots, and possesses a hardwired burst limiter to prevent the Ogryn from emptying his weapon the first time he pulls the trigger. This is something Ogryns find amusing, but as they often fail to remember to switch magazines, this habit leaves them without a ranged weapon. Ripper Guns are also built unusually robustly, so that the Ogryn can use them as convenient clubs in melee without damaging the weapon.

Autocannon

An Autocannon is similar in concept to twentieth and twenty-first century 20 millimetre to 40 millimetre calibre high velocity automatic weapons. They are rapid-firing ballistic weapons and use mass-reactive explosive ammunition. Like its ancient counterparts, an Autocannon is usually mounted on a weapon carriage or a vehicle because of its high weight and recoil. Astartes, with their superhuman strength, have been known to use Autocannons as man-portable heavy weapons. Due to their high rate of fire and sufficient killing power, they are effective against heavy infantry and light vehicles. Autocannons are used by the Imperial Guard, Space Marines, the Witch Hunters of the Ordo Hereticus and the Chaos Space Marines.

Battle Cannon

The Battle Cannon is a larger and heavier version of an Autocannon. It fires a large, high-explosive shell, which causes far more damage and explodes over a wider area than that of the smaller Autocannon. Due to its massive size, it is only mounted on Imperial vehicles or special weapons carriages. It is the standard weapon of the Imperial Guard's Leman Russ main battle tank.

Macrocannon

A Macrocannon is the largest form of Auto Weaponry, and is much heavier even than the Autocannon, essentially serving as a type of artillery piece. A Macrocannon can fire massive and explosive shells at a maximum range of around 40 kilometers when in atmosphere. Although it is possible to mount Macrocannons on heavy vehicles, they are more suited for use as emplacements and for static defence due to their considerable size, potency and ferocious recoil. Macrocannons are a Standard Template Construct (STC) technology, and often form the primary weapon of Imperial starships, where their effective range is far greater due to the lack of gravity and atmospheric drag.

Plasma Weapons

**Plasma Weapons** are highly potent and destructive directed energy weapons utilised in many forms by the advanced intelligent races of the Milky Way Galaxy. Most Plasma Weapons work by delivering pulses of searing energy and superheated matter that has been transmuted into a gaseous plasma state that carries an electrical charge. The plasma "bolts" fired by these weapons explode on impact and generate the destructive heat of a small sun. The sheer amount of energy released by the impact of superheated plasma is often enough to completely vaporise the target. Plasma Weapons vary greatly in form and size; ranging from small and compact Plasma Pistols to huge starship batteries that can obliterate entire cities in a single all forms of armoured infantry and light vehicles, the superheated bolts fired by smaller Plasma Weapons impact with the fury of a supernova, scything through steel, flesh and bone as if they were nothing.

However, due to the enormous temperatures and deadly energies that Plasma Weapons generate when fired, most such weapons are prone to overheating, destabilisation and misfire. This unfortunate quality makes the weapon potentially as deadly to the wielder as it is to the target. Yet the sheer power and deadliness of Plasma Weapons often outweigh the hazards that come with their use.

Operation

Plasma Weapons operate using raw plasma fuel, which consists of highly dangerous and volatile hydrogen, which is compressed and contained precariously within reinforced flasks in a gaseous state. These Plasma Flasks are potentially deadly in their own right, and it was almost surely a Plasma Flask whose handling rites were rushed that gave birth to the Imperial Plasma Grenade. For smaller Imperial Plasma Weapons, these Plasma Flasks often allow for 10 shots to be fired before reloading. As the hydrogen fuel is fed into a miniature fusion reactor core contained within the weapon's mechanism, the hydrogen is superheated into a highly-energized state of matter known as plasma; the fuel of the stars themselves. This plasma is held in the weapon's core by powerful electromagnetic confinement fields. When fired, the fields dilate open and the plasma is ejected via a linear magnetic accelerator as a bolt of superheated matter akin to a solar flare in appearance and temperature. For this reason, Plasma Weapons are also known as "Sun Guns" by the soldiers of the Imperium. The plasma fired is encased in a magnetic containment field that prevents the plasma "bolt" from dissipating before reaching its target. Once the plasma comes into contact with a solid material, the magnetic field ruptures and vents the superheated energy of the plasma onto the target; often vaporising the enemy.

However, most Plasma Weapons suffer from the problem of overheating. This is because the excess heat generated by the plasma must be released, for containing it within the weapon can prove catastrophic. This additional heat is often vented into the surrounding area as very few forms of proper cooling apparatus capable of neutralising the excess heat exist. However, even with this solution, it is not uncommon for Plasma Weapons to overheat and for the ravaging energies held in check by the magnetic containment fields to burst from their restraints and pour out of the weapon's specialised cooling vents. Though the weapon itself remains intact, the unfortunate soul wielding it often does not prove as lucky. However, Plasma Weapons are usually such a rare and valued technology it is often better that the weapon survive than the wielder. In extreme circumstances, the core of Plasma Weapons can even suddenly meltdown and explode, often with devastating consequences for the wielder and those nearby.

Known Plasma WeaponsImperium of Man

Imperial Plasma Weapons represent a dying technological art for the contemporary Imperium of Man, with the secrets of their design and construction almost lost outside the select circles of the Adeptus Mechanicus and theirTech-adept artisans. Their inner workings are a mystery for the most part in the wider Imperium, and only a select few Forge Worlds still know how to construct them. Existing weapons must be carefully maintained and passed down generation to generation with each operator carefully ensuring all the proper blessings of the Machine God are bestowed before use. As such, these relics of a bygone era of adcvanced human technology are greatly revered; and it is considered a great honour to be able to wield one. Plasma Weapons are more commonly found in the elite ranks of the Adeptus Astartes than amongst the troopers of the Imperial Guard, although the weapons are still uncommon amongst even the ranks of the Space Marines. Most notably, plasma technology is frequently found in the hands of the Dark Angels Chapter, which has maintained a large number of such weapons and the art of their construction since their Founding.

Plasma is an incredibly dangerous and unstable substance to deal with, and Imperial Plasma Weapon designs are some of the most unstable due to the inherent imperfections and flaws within them. Imperial Plasma Weapons tax their cooling systems considerably, and even Space Marines must push the limits of their own resilience by using them. However, the hydrogen fuel the forces of the Adeptus Astartes use in their Plasma Weapons is of a higher quantum state than that of standard Imperial patterns. The colossal energies generated by Imperial Plasma Weapons must be contained within an electromagnetic field. Failure of this field can result in the weapon overheating and producing a devastating meltdown within the miniature fusion reactor core. Imperial Plasma Weapons mounted on vehicles are a safer form of the technology, as their mounts can carry the specialised cooling equipment needed to prevent catastrophic overheating. However, Plasma Weapons are nevertheless valued for their destructive power - and many an Imperial soldier owes their life to the timely use of such weapons.

**Plasma Pistol** – Perhaps the most destructive sidearm in common use in the Imperium, a soldier with a Plasma Pistol wields the power of a small sun in his hands. Plasma Pistols are the smallest variant in the Imperial Plasma Weapon family, and their small and compact design allows them to be wielded in a single hand. They are most commonly paired with a close-combat weapon of some form. Each shot from a Plasma Pistol leaves the destructive fury of larger Plasma Gunsundiminished in a smaller package, although its diminished size means it must sacrifice range and rate of fire. Those willing to take the risk of using one possess a weapon capable of taking down almost any foe at close range. Plasma Pistols are a favourite of Imperial officers, who view it as a status symbol to be entrusted with such a valuable and venerated weapon. Few pistols are deadlier than a Plasma Pistol, and even many ranking Adeptus Astartes find them worth the trouble of acquiring and the risk of their use acceptable as a result of their sheer efficiency in eliminating foes at close range. However, Plasma Pistols hold smaller hydrogen flasks than larger Plasma Weapons and can thus only fire a handful of shots. They are dangerous to use on board voidships as a single shot can penetrate several bulkheads. Plasma Pistols most commonly have two modes of fire - a standard mode, and a maximal mode which uses more fuel in a single shot for additional stopping power. However, the user must wait a short time whilst the weapon recharges and replenishes its internal fuel reserves when using the latter setting.

**Barrage Plasma Pistol** – Barrage Plasma Pistols are deadly side arms and are a variant of the standard Plasma Pistol that is unique to the Jericho Reach Deathwatch, and few exist even within their hallowed armouries. Barrage Plasma Pistols feature a higher rate of fire than standard Plasma Pistols at the cost of increased energy consumption and chance of overheating.

**Plasma Torch** – A Plasma Torch is a common tool utilised by Imperial engineers and Tech-priests, exploration teams who need to breach multiple barriers, and Space Marine Techmarines. Plasma Torches utilise a controlled plasma arc to make precise alterations when fixing Imperial technologies, although they are more commonly used to cut through impeding bulkheads within voidships. Plasma Torches are capable of cutting through adamantine plating that is up to 20 centimetres thick in a standard minute, and can cut thinner and weaker materials far faster. Plasma Torches can also be fired as a weapon in a similar way to a Plasma Pistol, albeit at a shorter range and without the ability to fire on maximal mode. Many a foe who has come too close has been struck by a bolt of superheated plasma from a Plasma Torch.

**Plasma Grenade** – Imperial Plasma Grenades are an exceedingly rare form of grenade used by the armed forces of the Imperium that most likely originated when a wielder improperly handled a Plasma Flask. Plasma Grenades are most commonly only used by those who are able to acquire them, such as Deathwatch Space Marines, high ranking Space Marines and Inquisitors. These highly lethal grenades use a deliberate plasma containment field failure so that they erupt into blasts of white-hot energy. The dense plasma core of an Astartes Plasma Grenade is designed to not be fully consumed in the initial explosion, so it leaves a glowing, energised orb that continues to sear the area like a miniature sun. This tiny stellar body can continue to cause great damage to the immediate area for some time. It is of note that Imperial Plasma Grenades are cruder, although more potent, than the Eldar Plasma Grenades commonly used by Eldar assault troops.

**Plasma Gun** – Plasma Guns are probably the most common pattern of Imperial Plasma Weapons, and are powerful weapons in their own right. Rifle-sized and intended to be wielded by a single trooper, Plasma Guns fire compact "pulses" of plasma energy and have a reasonably quick rate of fire. Plasma Guns are often deployed in situations where raw takedown power is required against highly resilient or armoured targets as they can easily punch through armour and leave brightly glowing holes. Despite the risks it often poses to the bearer, Imperial soldiers who have access to these weapons will often select them from the armoury, willing to take the risk in exchange for their devastating power. Most extant Plasma Guns are hundreds, if not thousands, of standard years old. However, as a testament to their design, they remain as deadly today as they were on the day of their fabrication. Due to their sturdy construction, even in the event of an overheat, the weapon is likely to survive, though the wielder is often less fortunate. In the Imperial Guard, it is a rare "honour" to serve as a squad's plasma gunner. Whilst destructive, Plasma Guns are prone to overheating and few Guardsmen survive long enough to truly master these revered weapons. Plasma Guns most commonly have two modes of fire - a standard mode, and a maximal mode which uses more fuel in a single shot for additional stopping power; although the user must wait a short time whilst the weapon recharges and replenishes its internal fuel reserves.

**Barrage Plasma Gun** – Barrage Plasma Guns are rare and venerated weapons that are jealously guarded by the Techmarines of the Jericho Reach Deathwatch, and issued only to the most honoured Space Marines. Barrage Plasma Guns are highly tuned, rapid-fire weapons that can lay down incredible volumes of devastating plasma energy. While their ability to fire in semi-automatic and automatic modes make them both versatile and deadly, they use an immense amount of energy and are more prone to overheating than a typical Plasma Weapon. Deathwatch Space Marines see this as a small price to pay for the ability to spray volleys of plasma energy into charging bands of xenos.

**Combi-Plasma Gun** – Combi-Weapons are Bolters that have been specially modified by skilled artisans. Each has been expertly converted to house another weapon, which can be aPlasma Gun. This extra weapon carries only a limited charge, allowing the bearer a single fusillade - perfect for emergencies.

**Phased Plasma-Fusil** – Phased Plasma-Fusils are relics of the bygone era of the Horus Heresy, and are potent Plasma Weapons that are used only by the Thallax Cohorts of theAdeptus Mechanicus. Each Phased Plasma-Fusil is similar to a Plasma Gun, except that it trades strength and armour penetration capabilities for a faster rate of fire, especially when standing still.

**Plasma Talon** – The Dark Angels and their Unforgiven Successor Chapters utilise a unique form of relic Plasma Weapon known as the Plasma Talon. The Dark Angels Ravenwing Black Knights make use of them, for their Mark IV Raven Pattern Bikes have their twin-linked Bolters replaced with twin-linked Plasma Talons. With a range in between a Plasma Pistol and a Plasma Gun, a Plasma Talon gives the Black Knights a significant boost in power. With these weapons affixed to their metallic steeds, the Black Knights can tear holes in the enemy lines before they ride into combat to smash apart the foe.

**Plasma Blaster** – Plasma Blasters are relics of the bygone era of the Horus Heresy, and are potent Plasma Weapons that were only wielded as specialist weapons in Terminator Squads wearing Cataphractii Pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour. They are nearly identical in power and function to Plasma Talons, except they were of a more archaic double-barrelled design. Contemptor Pattern Dreadnoughts have also been known to mount a Plasma Blaster embedded within their Dreadnought Close Combat Weapon instead of a Storm Bolter.

**Plasma Cannon** – The largest man-portable Plasma Weapon is the Plasma Cannon, which is also known as the Heavy Plasma Gun. Fearsome to behold, a Plasma Cannon can drench an area in molten plasma when it fires its "bolts" of molten gas that explode on impact—burning, melting, and dissolving almost everything it touches with the destructive heat of a small sun. These weapons are so large they require a backpack fuel canister containing the weapon's store of hydrogen fuel, instead of using attached Plasma Flasks for ammunition, though only a Space Marine or one of their Traitor brethren would think about carrying such a weapon into battle. More often, Plasma Cannons are mounted on vehicles, which can carry the specialised cooling equipment needed to prevent catastrophic overheating. Plasma Cannons has a much longer range and ammunition supply than a Plasma Gun, and its violent discharges, hurled like miniature suns from the barrel, have a large impact area. The weapon can also be fired in a special maximal mode that exhausts more fuel in a single shot to provide a larger blast of heat on impact, creating a truly devastating raging fireball. After this, the Plasma Cannon must recharge and replenish its internal fuel reserves before it can fire again. Plasma Cannons are best employed against clusters of heavily armoured troops or light vehicles; although due to its larger size, its incidences of overheating and meltdowns often prove to be even more catastrophic then what would be the norm for Plasma Weapons.

**Missile Launcher Plasma Missile** – A larger incarnation of the Imperial Plasma Grenade, a salvo of Plasma Missiles can easily turn enemy troops into a smoking crater. Indeed, a soldier must take care when firing one of these rare and dangerous weapons to make sure his own squad and friendly forces are sufficiently out of harm's way. Plasma Missiles have the same continuing effect as an Imperial Plasma Grenade. However, in addition to this, they pose an additional threat to vehicles. The plasma core of a Plasma Missile can become fused with the hull of a target vehicle, leaving no escape whilst the plasma core burns its way inside.

**Plasma Storm Battery** – A Plasma Storm Battery is an ancient weapon found only in the armouries of the Dark Angelsand their Unforgiven Successor Chapters. Since the discovery of the Land Speeder Vengeance STC, it has since been mounted on these vehicles to create a devastating mobile weapons platform. A Plasma Storm Battery is capable of firing in two modes - a rapid burst mode of plasma pules similar to those fired by a Plasma Gun, or a slower super-charged mode that sends a toroid of plasma to explode over an even larger area than that of a Plasma Cannon bolt.

**Executioner Plasma Cannon** – Like its smaller cousins, an Executioner Plasma Cannon, also known as a Plasma Destroyer, is a temperamental but ultimately devastating weapon of war. It is especially effective against heavily armoured infantry, for its pulsed plasma bursts, which each are the size of a standard Plasma Cannon blast, are capable of incinerating the Emperor's enemies in a focussed beam of incandescent light which burns with the fury of the sun. Executioner Plasma Cannons are most commonly found mounted as the primary weapon on its namesake, the Leman Russ Executioner, although other Turret Emplacements and rare vehicle designs such as the Deimos Pattern Predator Executioner are also able to mount these rare weapons. Gradually, over many millennia, understanding of the plasma technology used to build Executioner Plasma Cannons has almost been lost, with Ryza being one of the few Forge Worlds still capable of producing them. During short engagements, the Executioner Plasma Cannon comes into its own, but over protracted fire fights the weapon is less reliable, as the time required to recharge its hydrogen fuel cell often puts the vehicle and its crew at risk during the fast-paced frenzy of battle. Given the ferocious temperatures generated by the Executioner Plasma Cannon when it is fired, the Ryza Pattern turret mounted on a Leman Russ Executioner incorporates emergency vents to disperse the heat from each shot. These are positioned on the forward turret sides, with the crew further screened by protective heat shielding. This is enough to save them in the event of a minor breach in the cannon's containment field, allowing them time to escape. If the worst should happen however, a catastrophic containment field failure can result in the destruction of the entire vehicle and a large area around it.

**Deathstrike Missile** – Deathstrike Missiles are massive intercontinental ballistic missiles which can be outfitted with several different types of warheads, including biological, tactical nuclear, and Titan-killers. However, by far the most common type is the plasma warhead, which is capable of vaporizing almost anything within a very large radius by unleashing a potent thermonuclear plasma reaction.**Omega Pattern Plasma Blastgun** – The Omega Pattern Plasma Blastgun, although available since its discovery in the late 39th Millennium by Explorator Magos Valistle Hum'nal, suffered doctrinal wranglings over the purity and completeness of its template within the Adeptus Mechanicus. This would delay its field testing and eventual deployment for centuries. The weapon's design, although more widely applicable that the arcane technologies of its forbearer - the standard Plasma Blastgun- lacks the stability of the superlative Ryza Pattern weapon more commonly deployed on Titans and Stormblades, and generates considerably more waste heat. However, the Omega Pattern also utilises a more compact generator design and force crucible, allowing it to be mounted on smaller super-heavy hulls such as the Macharius Omega Heavy Tank. An Omega Pattern Plasma Blastgun is capable of firing in two main modes, both of which are capable of throwing out huge toroids of plasma that are far larger than the bolts fired by the more commonPlasma Cannons. The first mode is a pulsed mode which trades strength for rate of fire, whilst the second maximal mode generates a single devastating blast capable of felling anything short of a Titan. However, due to the weapon's smaller size, an Omega Pattern Blastgun cannot fire blasts with quite the same large scale as those fired by a standard Plasma Blastgun.

**Plasma Blastgun** – Plasma Blastguns are immense Plasma Weapons only found mounted on Titans and on theStormblade super-heavy tank. Originally designed as a Titan weapon, it can be most commonly be found mounted as an arm weapon on a _Reaver_-class Titan or _Warhound_-class Titan, or as a carapace weapon on a _Warlord_-class Titan. However, the Stormblade design, which was originally designed to fulfil the same "Titan-hunter" role of the Shadowsword, trades the latter's rare Volcano Cannon for a modified Plasma Blastgun that can be mounted on the tank's chassis. This is an effective weapon but lacks the awesome power of the Volcano Cannon, meaning its gun crews must fire at a much shorter range to engage their enemy. First developed upon the Forge World of Ryza, the Plasma Blastgun is a devastating weapon capable of vaporising whole armies in a single salvo. On a Stormblade chassis, space created by the removal of the original Volcano Cannon's redundant main generator and capacitors is used by massive fuel cells which more than adequately power the tank's plasma weaponry. Additional space is also taken up by the weapon's extensive cooling system, and much like its smaller cousin, the Leman Russ Executioner, a Stormblade's crew are protected by additional heat shielding. The vehicle's larger size also allows for a more efficient main cooling system, making it a more reliable vehicle than the Executioner. A Plasma Blastgun is capable of firing in two main modes, both of which are capable of throwing out huge toroids of plasma that are far larger than the bolts fired by the more common Plasma Cannons and the Omega Pattern Plasma Blastgun. The first mode is a pulsed mode which trades strength for rate of fire, whilst the second maximal mode generates a single devastating blast capable of felling anything short of a Titan.

**Plasma Destructor** – A Plasma Destructor is one of the largest deployable land-based Imperial Plasma Weapons, and is only found mounted as an arm weapon on a _Warlord_-class Titan, or as a carapace weapon on an _Imperator_-class Titan. It is similar in power to a Plasma Blastgun, but has a further range and increased rate of fire. A Plasma Destructor is capable of firing in two main modes, both of which throw out huge toroids of plasma that are similar in size to the bolts fired byPlasma Blastguns. The first mode is a pulsed mode which trades strength for a high rate of fire, whilst the second maximal mode generates multiple devastating blasts capable of felling almost anything in its path.

**Plasma Annihilator** – A Plasma Annihilator is the largest deployable land-based Imperial Plasma Weapon, and is only found mounted as an arm weapon on Emperor Battle Titans such as the _Imperator_-class Titan. It is similar in power to a Plasma Blastgun and Plasma Destructor, but has an even further range and an increased rate of fire compared to both as it is linked directly to the Titan's monstrous plasma reactors. A Plasma Annihilator is capable of firing in two main modes, both of which throw out huge toroids of plasma that are similar in size to the bolts fired byPlasma Blastguns and Plasma Destructors. The first mode is a pulsed mode which trades strength for an extremely high rate of fire, whilst the second maximal mode generates a devastating blast at a still relatively high rate of fire capable of felling anything that stands in the Titan's path.

**Plasma Bomb** – Plasma Bombs are Plasma Weapons designed to be used by Imperial Starhawk bombers to assault enemy capital ships during void combat. When a Starhawk comes in close for its bombing run on a starship's hull, it will often drop flurries of these plasma warheads from its mid-bay bomb-firing cylinders. However, larger forms of Plasma Bombs have also been known to be dropped onto planets, often as part of an orbital bombardment or _Exterminatus_ action.

**Plasma Torpedo** – Plasma Torpedo warheads are the standard armament for Imperial Torpedoes used in starship void combat. These systems are designed to blast through a warship's armoured hull, using their high speed to punch deep into the target vessel. The plasma reactor that powers a Plasma Torpedo's drive forces it deep into the bowels of the ship and then it overloads, contributing to the fury of the warhead's detonation. This reduces complexity, making their manufacture comparatively simple. Thus, these torpedoes are the staple of many Imperial Navy warships' armouries. However, larger forms of Plasma Torpedoes have also been known to be dropped onto planets, often as part of an orbital bombardment or_ Exterminatus_ action.

**Plasma Lance** – Plasma Lances are the most common form of Imperial warship Lance weapon that makes up Imperial Navy Lance batteries. Plasma Lance Batteries are devastating in power and effective at long ranges for pinpoint strikes to penetrate enemy ships' shields and armour.

**Plasma Mortar** – Plasma Mortars are rare space defence weapons only found mounted in powerful batteries on _Ramilies_-class Starforts. They form part of each Starfort's overwhelming defences and are extremely powerful weapons at long range.

**Plasma Projector (Plasma Battery)** – Many Imperial Navy starships are armed with powerful Plasma Batteries of Plasma Projectors which hurl out great balls of plasma energy to decimate enemy warships. The Hecutor Pattern Plasma Battery is an ancient variant of plasma macro-weaponry that refocuses the power of a plasma blast, concentrating it into a compressed packet that can be fired over extremely long distances. It is rare to see these on any but the oldest vessels, meaning many are found on Heretic vessels lost to the forces of Chaos millennia ago. Few warships can match the power requirements necessary to equip a full broadside of these weapons, so these weapons are almost exclusively the providence of Battleships and larger warships. The _Tyrant_-class Cruiser is also most notable for its Plasma Projectors, for its super-charged Plasma Batteries are able to project its plasma blasts considerably further than comparable cruiser weapons, whilst retaining the same weight of fire at close quarters.

**Nova Cannon** – Nova Cannons are a classification of exceptionally powerful weaponry that can only be mounted upon capital ships. Mounted below the heavily armoured prows of Imperial Navy Cruisers andBattleships, Nova Cannons have few equals in terms of their range or destructive power. While variation exists, a typical Nova Cannon consists of an array of potent gravimetric impellers designed to accelerate a projectile to a fraction of the speed of light. These projectiles vary more than the nature of the cannons themselves, although the most common comes in the form of sophisticated plasma warheads which burn with the ferocity of a small star for a fraction of a second. In any case, a well-used Nova Cannon is a terrifying weapon to face, as much a psychological tool as a weapon. These weapons, however, are often ill-favoured by the Imperial Navy, with most starship captains preferring to utilise the more traditional torpedoes. Those few who favour the weapon understand that it is difficult to use and often rendered useless at close ranges. The Ryza Pattern Nova Cannon variant uses highly unstable plasma-based macro-bombs. These weapons are even more power-hungry than the standard Stygies-pattern, but are believed to be slightly more effective as well. With this additional power does come some additional questions of stability, as weaponising such a huge quantity of plasma carries its own dangers.

Flamer

**Flamers** are flamethrower weapons, capable of unleashing a liquid incendiary chemical that bursts into flames as it leaves the weapon. Similar flame-based weapons are used by several of the intelligent races and their militaries across the Milky Way Galaxy. Flamers are valued for their ability to destroy many enemies at once, regardless of any protective cover they possess. Both Flamers and the more compact Hand Flamers are considered assault weapons due to their relatively short range. Loyalist Space Marine and Chaos Space Marine flamers fire a mix of highly volatile liquid chemicals which ignite with the use of a pilot light. The flaming chemical sticks to its target and continues burning on its own accord - those who are not killed instantly die horribly as the super-hot chemical continues to burn through their bodies. The most common flammable substance used as Flamer fuel is Promethium, which is a petroleum-like jelly that can stick to a target and is very similar to the twenty-first century incendiary called napalm. The flamer fires a burst of expanding flames, making the weapon effective at killing enemies in cover.

Fast AttackBane Wolf

The **Bane Wolf** is a variant of the Hellhound flame-thrower tank that is used by the Imperial Guard, and both vehicles are based upon the Imperial Chimera armoured transport chassis. The Bane Wolf variant of the Hellhound replaces the Hellhound's Inferno Cannon with a special weapon known as a Chem Cannon that makes it more effective in an anti-infantry role. The Chem Cannon is very effective against all types of infantry, even heavily armoured elite soldiers and those wearing Power Armour. Bane Wolfs are only used when the complete eradication of the enemy is warranted. The Chem Cannon fires a form of poisonous gas that smothers targets with broiling clouds of noxious fumes that dissolve organic material in moments. Those victims caught in the cloud die a horrible death as their blood literally boils within their bodies and their flesh sloughs from their bones. This powerful weapon is rarely deployed, as the gas and fumes produced by the vehicle's main weapon are powerful enough to kill even Space Marines. There are several different patterns of the Hellhound and its variants in use by the Imperium, such as the Artemia Pattern which replaces the vehicle's turret with one that is remotely controlled from inside the vehicle by the vehicle's commander. This allows the tank to make do with a crew of only two. The Mars Pattern Bane Wolf replaces the standard pattern's single large fuel tank with several smaller fuel tanks that can be hidden inside the remnants of the Chimera chassis' troop compartment. The use of the smaller fuel tanks is preferred as they make the Hellhound and its variants more difficult to identify when compared to regular Chimera transports.

the Bane Wolf replaces the standard hull-mounted Inferno Cannon found on the Hellhound with a Chem Cannon. The Bane Wolf is the only known Imperial Guard unit that makes use of the Chem Cannon, and in fact the Bane Wolf is the only unit in the entire Imperium that is known to make use of it. The Bane Wolf stores the toxic gases that fuel its main weapon in modified versions of the Promethium storage tanks used on the standard Hellhound. The vehicle is also armed with a hull-mounted Heavy Bolter, which can be replaced with either a Heavy Flamer or a Multi-Melta. The tank can also be outfitted with the following enhancements: camouflage netting, extra armour plating, a Hunter-Killer Missile Launcher, improved communications equipment, a mine sweeper, rough terrain modifications, a Pintle-mounted Heavy Stubber or Storm Bolter, track guards, a searchlight, a dozer blade or mine plough, and smoke launchers.

**Bane Wolf **Vehicle Name:Bane Wolf

Main Armament:Turret-mountedChem Cannon

Forge World of Origin:Graia, Mars, Artemia

Secondary Armament:Hull-mounted Heavy Bolter

Known Patterns:Unknown

Traverse:360 degrees

Crew:1 Commander, 1 Driver, 1 Gunner

Elevation:-8 to 25 degrees

Powerplant:Vulcanor 16 Twin-Coupled Multi-Burn

Main Ammunition:Unknown

Weight:35 Tonnes (approx)

Secondary Ammunition:400 RoundsLength:6.90 metres

Armour:Width:5.70 metres

Height:4.10 metres

Superstructure:150 millimetres

Ground Clearance:0.45 metres

Hull:120 millimetres

Max Speed On-Road:70 kilometres per hour (approx)

Gun Mantlet:N/AMax Speed Off-Road:55 kilometres per hour (approx)

Vehicle Designation:Unknown

Transport Capacity:N/AFiring Ports:N/AAccess Points:N/ATurret:150 millimetres

Chimera

The **Chimera** is the standard armoured personnel carrier (APC) of the Imperial Guard and its chassis is the basis for a large number of other Imperial armoured vehicles such as the Basilisk artillery andSalamander scout vehicles. The basic Chimera is equipped with aMulti-Laser but can also be equipped with a variety of other heavy weapons, such as Twin-linked Heavy Bolters, an Autocannon or aHeavy Flamer. The Chimera also mounts a hull-mounted Heavy Bolter or Heavy Flamer and 6 hull-mounted Lasguns on the vehicle's sides which can be fired from the passenger compartment, allowing the infantry inside to fire at the enemy. It can carry up to 12 Guardsmen or 6 Ogryns. The Chimera also has amphibious capabilities, allowing it to take part in naval amphibious assaults or overcome watery obstacles like swamps and rivers.

The Chimera is the Imperial Guard's most commonly used armoured personnel carrier (APC). These nearly ubiquitous vehicles are extremely durable and practical, capable of mounting a wide array of support weapons. From within the armoured confines of the Chimera, an Imperial Guard infantry squad can use the vehicle's hull-mounted weapons to unleash a lethal wave of firepower into an enemy, protected from all but the most heavy weapons in return. Chimeras are also a powerful symbol of the might of the Imperial Guard and are fitted with a range of equipment, including searchlights, to locate the enemy, and massive bulldozer blades to clear all obstacles in the way of the Imperial Guard's heavier main battle tanks. With scanners and communication voxes, Chimeras are also suitable mobile bases of operations from which Imperial Guard officers can efficiently direct their forces.

Squads of Imperial Guardsmen mounted on Chimeras are usually called Armoured Fist mechanised infantry units. These squads lend speed and tactical flexibility to the otherwise often slow and rigid formations of the Imperial Guard. An Imperial Guard infantry regiment does not typically include any mechanised elements, as it is difficult for most Imperial Planetary Governors to obtain and then maintain the vehicles from the Adeptus Mechanicus needed for such units. Because of this reality, it is quite common for Imperial Guard commanders to attach Armoured Fist squads from other, fully mechanised regiments to provide fast-moving armoured transports to non-mechanised infantry units. Armoured Fist squads are able to respond quickly to emergent threats or move ahead of the main body of an advancing Imperial force and seize vital objectives until reinforcements from the infantry arrive. Enemy positions are quickly overrun as the heavy weaponry of the Chimeras, spitting a stream of fiery death into the packed ranks of the enemy, is accompanied by the charge of the infantry squads on-board who move down the vehicles' rear steel ramps and mow down all the survivors at point blank range. Armoured Fist squads have a reputation in the Guard for getting the job done and are in high demand by infantry regiment commanders. Typically deployed against the most heavily defended of enemy positions where the armoured protection of a Chimera is vital for a successful assault, it is no surprise that Armoured Fist squads have an even higher rate of attrition than standard Imperial Guard heavy infantry units.

Over the millennia, the Chimera has been pressed into service in a variety of different forms, proving its reliability over and over again. The Chimera is a highly versatile armoured vehicle able to operate in the most hostile environments faced by the Imperial Guard. Chimeras are amphibious vehicles and are able to move through dense swamps, deep marshes and even rivers. Many an enemy of the Imperium has been destroyed because its commander believed his flanks protected by such watery obstructions, only to find ranks of Imperial Guardsmen, supported by the potent anti-personnel weaponry of the Chimera that had transported them, driving into the very heart of his forces.

The most common variant of the Chimera armoured personnel transport, the Mars Pattern, is armed with a turret-mounted Multi-Laser, a hull-mounted Heavy Bolter, and six Lasguns controlled by the tank's passengers. Another common variant of the Chimera mounts a Heavy Flamer on the turret and sometimes the hull, or a turret-mounted Heavy Bolter which allows the Chimera to act as close fire support for infantry operating in dense terrain. The Forge World of Gryphonne IV produces its own unique variant armed with a turret-mounted Twin-linked Heavy Bolter, and while not very effective against enemy armour it is able to lay down a hail of explosive bolts that are highly effective against densely packed enemy infantry, such as the forces commonly deployed by the Tyranids and theOrks. Chimeras can also be equipped with an Autocannon which allows them to be used as light anti-vehicle tanks. Another variant derived from STC data discovered on the world of Kronus by Imperial Guard forces during the Dark Crusade allows a pattern of Chimera, known as the Kronus Pattern, to be built that replaces the normal Chimera turret with one similar to the Space Marine Predator tank turret, including its Autocannon. The Chimera can also be outfitted with camouflage netting, extra armour plating, track guards, improved communications equipment, a Hunter-Killer Missile Launcher, a Pintle-mounted Heavy Stubber or Storm Bolter, rough terrain modifications, a dozer blade, a searchlight, or smoke launchers.

Hellhound

The **Hellhound** is a flame-thrower tank of the Imperial Guard that is based upon the Imperial Chimera armoured transport chassis. Its main weapon is the Inferno Cannon, also known as the "Dragonfire Thrower", which is a large Flamer that projects streams of burningPromethium at range, making the Hellhound well-suited to close-range fire support missions such as countering enemy melee units that attempt to assault Imperial armour and driving dug-in enemies out of cover. The Hellhound replaces the troop compartment of the Chimera with a large Promethium storage tank, as its main weapon needs a lot of fuel to function. The large storage tank replaces the passenger area at the vehicle's rear, this makes the fuel tank, and the vehicle itself, vulnerable to enemy weapons. The Hellhound is widely used by the Imperial Guard as a useful weapon to clear enemies out of cover. Hellhound tanks usually make up their own company in a regiment, but are rarely fielded as one. Instead the Hellhound and its variants are attached to infantry and armoured regiments as they are needed. There are very few Imperial Guard regiments lucky enough to possess an entire company of these tanks. The crew of a Hellhound are often considered brave as the tank is prone to exploding catastrophically if an enemy round detonates the fuel tank, but many Hellhound crews are made up of pyromaniacs, who actually prefer the Hellhound's fire-based weapons and spend much of their free time playing with the output of the Hellhound's Promethium dispersal valves to increase the vehicle's fire output. This is discouraged by Imperial Guard commanders, as it makes these vehicles even more prone to explosion.

The Hellhound's main weapon is a turret-mounted Inferno Cannon and the vehicle also has a hull-mounted Heavy Bolter which can be replaced with a Heavy Flamer. The tank can also be outfitted with the following enhancements: camouflage netting, extra armour plating, a Hunter-Killer Missile Launcher, improved communications equipment, a mine sweeper, rough terrain modifications, a Pintle-mounted Heavy Stubber or Storm Bolter, track guards, a searchlight, a dozer blade, and smoke launchers.

Rough Rider Cavalry Squadron

Rough Riders are specialist horse warriors who are recruited fromFeral Worlds where nomadic clans and warrior horse-lodges have perfected the art traditional cavalry techniques through years of bloodshed. Often, members of the Rough Riders retain many of the ferocious customs of their home worlds such as ritual scarring and tribal tattoos. Mounted upon specially bred steeds or other draught animal's back that are as tough and dangerous (and ill-tempered) as the warriors who ride them. Whilst the majority of Rough Riders are raised from feral, undeveloped worlds this is not exclusively the case. On some planets the honour of riding a steed to war is reserved for the elite classes, formalised horse-warrior aristocracies that have accumulated generations of cavalry experience. Despite its legions of machinery and fighting vehicles, even the Imperial Guard has a place for these fierce mounted warriors. These traditional cavalry units are fast and flexible, but cannot last for long in intense combat with advanced technological or armoured enemy forces. Compared to normal Guardsmen, Rough Riders specialise in close combat, but they are weak compared to the close combat specialists of many other armies. Rough Riders carry a variety of weapons but the most deadly is, without doubt, the potent explosive-tipped hunting lance derived from lethal spear heads used by cavalry on their home worlds to hunt down large carnivorous animals. This one-shot advantage in close combat makes them especially useful when deployed for hit-and-run tactics.


End file.
